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Vanderbilt Institute for Surgery and Engineering

Vanderbilt Institute for Surgery and Engineering

Home » Personnel » Nabil Simaan

Nabil Simaan

Professor of Mechanical Engineering

I am interested in medical applications of surgical robotics and intervention. Typical research projects I undertake explore the limits of existing technologies for enabling new procedures and supporting intelligent and safe interaction with anatomy.

My current applied research interests include synthesis of novel robotic systems for surgical assistance in confined spaces with applications to minimally invasive surgery of the throat, natural orifice surgery, cochlear implant surgery, and dexterous bimanual microsurgery.

Theoretical aspects of my research include theoretical kinematics of mechanisms, synthesis and optimization of robots and mechanisms, design of flexure mechanisms and flexible robots, parallel robots, applications of line geometry tools and screw theory for analysis and synthesis of robotic devices, applications of actuation redundancy and kinematic redundancy for stiffness control (modulation), applications of algebraic geometry methods for polynomial system solving related to mechanism designs, optimal path planning and insertion of flexible under actuated robots.

Areas of Research: Robotics