Program

Stefanie Speidel has been Professor of Translational Surgical Oncology and a director at the National Center for Tumor Diseases Dresden since 2017. She is also one of the speakers of the DFG Cluster of Excellence CeTI and the Konrad Zuse AI School SECAI.

She received her PhD from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in 2009 and led the junior research group Computer-Assisted Surgery from 2012 to 2016. She is Board Secretary and a Fellow of the MICCAI Society.

She has co-authored more than 170 publications, organises key workshops and challenges, and has served as general chair and programme chair for major international conferences, including IPCAI and MICCAI. Her research focuses on machine learning for image- and robot-assisted surgery.

Dr Massimiliano ‘Max’ Simi is Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of MMI, bringing over 15 years of leadership in surgical robotics. Driven by a passion for innovation, he invented the proprietary NanoWrist instrument, which forms the foundation of MMI’s patent portfolio.

He continues to direct research and product development and upgrades for the flagship Symani Surgical System and Synaptix visualisation platform. Prior to co-founding MMI, Max served as an engineer, delivering advanced robotic and mechatronic solutions to Silicon Valley medical-device start-ups.

He holds a PhD in Innovative Technologies and Medical Robotics from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, an Executive MBA, and both an MSc and BSc in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Pisa.

Brad Nelson has been Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at ETH Zürich since 2002, where his research focuses on micro-, nano-, and medical robotics. He studied mechanical engineering at Illinois and Minnesota, worked in computer vision at Honeywell and software engineering at Motorola, taught mathematics in Botswana, and then obtained a PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University.

At ETH Zürich, Nelson has built an internationally respected research group known for turning fundamental questions into working systems. His laboratory has become a training ground for researchers who value both rigorous science and practical impact, and many of his former students and collaborators now lead their own efforts in academia, industry, and medicine.

His work on microrobots has helped move the field from conceptual demonstrations towards clinical relevance.

Dan Stoyanov is a Professor at UCL Computer Science and Co-Director of the UCL Hawkes Institute. His research is focused on surgical AI and robotics, with a particular focus on computer vision in surgical endoscopy and minimally invasive surgery.

He is a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies, in addition to leading large-scale projects funded by the Wellcome Trust and EPSRC. He is Chief Scientist at Digital Surgery, acquired by Medtronic plc, and co-founder of Odin Vision Ltd, acquired by Olympus, Panda Surgical Ltd, Enacuity Ltd, Helico Technologies Ltd, and Invexo Ltd.

He is also a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Academy of Medical Sciences, IEEE, IET, and the MICCAI Society.

Christian Duriez received a PhD in robotics from CEA and the University of Évry, France, in 2004. He was a postdoctoral fellow with the CIMIT SimGroup in Boston, Massachusetts.

In 2006, he joined Inria Lille Nord-Europe, where he worked on interactive simulation of deformable objects and haptic rendering, with a focus on surgical simulation. In 2014, he was promoted to Directeur de Recherche and is currently head of the DEFROST team, created in January 2015. In 2018, he was an invited researcher at Stanford University.

He contributed to the creation of the open-source SOFA framework and co-founded InSimo in 2013 and Compliance Robotics in 2024. His research interests include soft-robot modelling and control, fast finite-element methods, simulation of contact response, and the use of soft robots for haptics.

David is Bowel Cancer UK & RCS England Professor of Surgery at the University of Leeds and Honorary Consultant Surgeon at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. His clinical interests include robotic and minimally invasive surgery for colorectal cancer.

He is Chief Investigator for several NIHR portfolio clinical trials, including MRC/EME/NIHR ROLARR, HTA/NIHR FIAT, HTA/NIHR SaFaRI, and MRC/EME/NIHR IntAct. He is Director of the Leeds Institute for Medical Research, Clinical Director of the Leeds NIHR HealthTech Research Centre, and Clinical Director for the Leeds RCS England Surgical Trials Centre.

He sits on several funding panels, including NIHR Advanced Fellowships, NIHR i4i PDA, and NHSE/SBRI Cancer Innovations Awards. His translational research interests include the development and early-phase evaluation of surgical technologies.

Prof. Hongliang Ren is a Professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he received his PhD in 2008. His academic career has included appointments at Johns Hopkins University, Harvard Medical School, leading US children’s hospitals, and the National University of Singapore.

His research interests include biorobotics, medical mechatronics, soft continuum robots, intelligent control, soft sensors, and multisensory learning for medical robotics.

He is a recipient of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, CUHK Young Researcher Award, NUS Young Investigator Award, IAMBE Early Career Award, and numerous best-paper awards.

He is consistently ranked among the world’s top 2% most-cited scientists and has published more than 240 papers, receiving more than 23,000 citations, with an H-index of 77.