Keynote Speaker: Blake Hannaford, Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Adjunct Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Surgery at the University of Washington, Seattle.
Talk Title: Surgery via Robotics, AI and Internet
Abstract:
The science and art of surgery is rapidly incorporating today’s most disruptive technologies to provide improved care and better access to care for patients. Robotics (today treating millions of patients a year) significantly reduces the invasiveness of pelvic surgeries such as hysterectomy and prostatectomy for faster and more comfortable recoveries. AI will increasingly enable semi-automated procedures and robotic assistants to surgeons. Experience with telemedicine during the 2020 Covid pandemic shutdowns has paved the way for Internet enabled remote surgery, potentially increasing access to surgical and other care for rural patients. This talk will review some research by interdisciplinary researchers from Engineering and Medicine at the University of Washington Biorobotics Laboratory into this future.
Speaker Bio:
Blake Hannaford received the B.S. degree in Engineering and Applied Science from Yale University in 1977, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. From 1986 to 1989 he worked on the remote control of robot manipulators in the Man-Machine Systems Group in the Automated Systems Section of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech and supervised that group from 1988 to 1989.
Since September 1989, he has been at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he is Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering. He was named IEEE Fellow in 2005. He was at Google-X / Google Life Sciences / Verily from April 2014 to December 2015. He developed the Master of Science in Technology Innovation Robotics Degree Option at the GIX program in Bellevue WA from 2918 to 2020. And was a Hardware Research Manager at Meta Reality Labs Research for a year in 2023. He is currently doing full time teaching and research at UW ECE.