Jared Lawson

I am a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Vanderbilt University. I work in the Advanced Robotics and Mechanism Applications (ARMA) Lab under Dr. Nabil Simaan. My dissertation research looks into enabling image and sensory-guided control of steerable robotic catheters for neurointervention. This work combines mechatronics, flexible rod modeling, fluoroscopic image segmentation, and control algorithms.

My first experiences with surgical robotics were as a undergraduate intern at Medtronic, where I contributed first as a quality engineering intern on the surgeon console team before becoming a mechanical design intern on the surgical instrumentation team. After graduating from Boston University with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, I began working at Neocis, Inc. as a mechanical engineer on the YOMI robot-assisted dental surgery platform.

Diving into these complex mechatronic systems, I found myself wanting to contribute not only on mechanical design, but on all robotics aspects, including modeling and control software. This ultimately led to me to my current graduate studies at Vanderbilt with Dr. Simaan, where I’ve worked on image-guided control and modeling of steerable catheters.