Abstract

Abstract: One of the next technological frontiers in medicine is the realization of personalized robots that integrate seamlessly and synergistically with the human to perform repair or augmentation of biological functions over extended period of time. In this talk I will introduce two types of robotic devices that act as prostheses inside and outside the human body, emphasizing on their specific biology-imposed challenges and on technological approaches for personalized medical assistance. I will focus on a new class of medical robots, robotic implants, that autonomously grows tissues in vivo, applied to the treatment of esophageal atresia.

Bio: Dana D. Damian is a Lecturer in Automatic Control and System Engineering Department at the University Sheffield and Centre of Assistive Technology and Connected Healthcare (CATCH) in Sheffield, U.K.. Previously, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard University. She obtained her Ph.D. at University of Zurich in 2012. During her Ph.D. she was a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University and Stanford University in 2011, and Carnegie Mellon University in 2012. Her research interest is to create sustainable robots for personalized healthcare, and her focus areas are medical robots and assistive technology.