2012 Graduate Petros Giataganas

What is your current role

Research Scientist at Touch Surgery, London, UK

Date of completion

MRes (Sept 2012), PhD (March 2017)

What was the most beneficial things about the programme

Interdisciplinary knowledge

Great access to state-of-the-art facilities (e.g. 3D printers, surgical theatres, surgical systems).

Students with diverse backgrounds; doctors, engineers, physicists manage to expel in the course and accomplish great positions at the industry and academia.

Teaching staff are really approachable, provide not only great theoretical knowledge but also provide practical tips and tricks in state-of-the-art technologies.

What are your main areas of interest in Medical Robotics

Medical robotic instrumentation with specilisation in optical imaging for real-time optical biopsy.

What was the title of your dissertation

A Learning From Demonstration Framework for Robotic-Assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery

What was the most important outcome of my research

My work introduced a cooperative robotic control strategy for robotic-assisted cellular level imaging; a robotic manipulator can “learn” how to perform automated complex surgical tasks, such as large-area endomicroscopy scanning, from surgeon-demonstrated best practices. This was the first step towards the automation of complex surgical tasks by incorporating the experience of surgeons. 

Since you got your degree, what have you done in education

I was awarded my MRes degree with Distinction and published my work as a paper at the largest robotics conference (ICRA 2013) I continued to pursue a PhD degree at the Hamlyn Centre at Imperial College, which I successfully received in March 2017 

I was granted the Institute of Global Health Innovation scholarship for my PhD studies

I was a Teaching Assistant for 3 years in the Medical Robotics module for the MRes course and also a supervisor for the individual research project of two successful MRes students (both awarded a PhD position later)

What would you like to do next

Succeed in the field of Robotic Surgery, focusing on technological innovation with direct patient benefits while reducing health inequalities worldwide.