Founders
Howie Choset, Ph.D.
Howie Choset is an Associate Professor of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. Motivated by applications in confined spaces, Choset has created a comprehensive program in snake robots, which has led to basic research in mechanism design, path planning, motion control, and estimation. His group’s work has been widely recognized through many best paper awards and nominations by the robotics research community.
Many of these papers are co-authored with the other founders. The National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research have both awarded Choset their prestigious young investigator awards, one for snake robot planning and the other for de-mining. In 2002, Choset was selected by MIT’s Technology Review as one of the Top 100 Innovators in the world under 35 (see biorobotics.org for more details). In 2005, Choset co-founded Medrobotics and still serves as the company’s acting Chief Technology Officer.
Marco A. Zenati, M.D., FETCS
Marco Zenati is a Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, Associate Surgeon in the Division of Cardiac Surgery of the Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Chief of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System. Professor Zenati is an internationally recognized pioneer of Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery and Medical Robotics. In 2000, he performed the U.S.-first robotic coronary bypass surgery on the beating heart at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Professor Zenati has published more than 250 peer-reviewed manuscripts and books in cardiovascular medicine and has been awarded continued Federal funding by the National Institute of Health (NIH) and National Heart, Lung & Blood institute (NHLBI) for his groundbreaking research on innovative medical robotics.
Professor Zenati is the recipient of the Philip K. Caves Award for “Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Heart Failure Research” from the ISHLT and of the Alexis Carrel International Award by transplant pioneer Christian Barnard.
Alon Wolf, Ph.D.
Dr. Wolf earned all his academic degrees from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Technion I.I.T. In 2002, Dr. Wolf joined the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University as a researcher, at the Biomedical Robotics Lab. He also held a research faculty position at the Institute for Computer Assisted Orthopedic Surgery (ICAOS) at the Western Pennsylvania Hospital and was an adjunct Professor in the School of Medicine of the University of Pittsburgh. In March of 2006, Dr. Wolf joined the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Technion, where he founded and became the director of the Biorobotics and Biomechanics Lab (BRML). The scope of work done in the BRML provides the framework for fundamental theories in kinematics biomechanics and mechanism design, with applications in biomechanics, medical robotics and biorobotics.
Dr. Wolf’s career in medical robotics started with his Ph.D. work, which focused on the kinematics of parallel mechanism and how they could assist surgeons during spinal operations (resulting in the SpineAssist system). Dr. Wolf then expanded on these ideas to develop a Haptic controlled Mini Bone Attached Robotic System (MBARS) for bony surface scanning and to assist orthopedic surgeons to prepare the bone surface to insert knee implants. Dr. Wolf’s collaboration with Howie Choset resulted in many snake robot devices for applications ranging from urban search and rescue to medicine (HARP).
Dr. Wolf’s current work focuses on gait analysis, virtual reality rehabilitation, and biomechanics modeling. He has many papers published in prestigious journals in kinematics, robotics and biomechanics, and has won best paper awards in robotics.