Dissertation overview: Toward improving surgery and patient care, this work presents the development of needle-sized surgical tools and robotic systems that incorporate distal articulation mechanisms.

Swaney has accepted a position as a technology transfer associate at Vanderbilt University.

The title of Lin’s thesis is “Monitoring of Thermal Processes for Medical Applications Using Infrared Thermography”. This thesis explores the the use of infrared camera technology to provide thermal monitoring for two specific applications: bone drilling and blood vessel sealing. The technical contributions consists of the creation of a miniature thermal stereo camera system to provide thermal monitoring, and the development of a software to acquire and visualize the video stream produced by IR cameras.

Lin’s future plan is to pursue doctorate at University of Washington, Seattle.

Thesis project: Analytical information on reconstruction of white matter fiber orientations using one of the largest single subject datasets acquired on a MRI scanner of the human brain, includes 6000 MRI volumes.

Nath plans to continue at Vanderbilt University pursuing his doctorate in Computer Science.

Project: Impacts of histology-assessed tissue structures on ultrasound clutter (aka Ultrasound image degradation)
Shu plans to pursue her doctorate in bioengineering at Stanford University.

Shaner spent the last year working in the BEAM Lab (through SyBBURE) developing simplified ultrasound hardware to estimate tissue stiffness. By making smaller, cheaper elastography equipment, it is possible for clinicians to make handheld, noninvasive tests that quantify liver fibrosis or radiation damage to the skin.

Goodale has accepted a position as a Research Assistant in a Neurosurgery Lab for Dr. Dario Englot for one year with hopes to attend grad school for biomedical engineering PhD the following year.