Michael Yip, Ph.D.

Director, Advanced Robotics and Controls Laboratory Medical Robotics Collaboratory, UC San Diego

Dr. Michael Yip is the Director of the Advanced Robotics and Controls Laboratory (ARCLab) and an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. His group currently focuses on surgical robots, biomimetic design, and robot learning. His research has received several best paper awards and nominations at ICRA and IROS and RA-L, and he has been recognized by the NSF CAREER award, NIH Trailblazer award, and as a RAS Distinguished Lecturer. Several of his research has led to founded startups, and he was named the Faculty Innovator of the Year at UCSD in 2024, and elected into the National Academy of Inventors. Dr. Yip was previously a Disney Research in 2014 and Amazon Robotics in 2018. He holds a bachelor's degree in mechatronics engineering from the University of Waterloo, a master's degree. in electrical engineering from the University of British Columbia, and a Ph.D. in bioengineering from Stanford University.

Robert J. Webster, III, PhD

Ricard A. Schroeder Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University

Robert J. Webster III is the Richard A. Schroeder Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Vanderbilt University. He received his B.S. in electrical engineering from Clemson University in 2002, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the Johns Hopkins University in 2004 and 2007. In 2008, he joined the mechanical engineering faculty of Vanderbilt University, where he currently directs the Medical Engineering and Discovery Laboratory. He founded and serves on the steering committee for the Vanderbilt Institute for Surgery and Engineering, which brings together physicians and engineers to solve challenging clinical problems. He is the founder and President of Virtuoso Surgical, Inc. and EndoTheia, Inc. which are commercializing technologies invented in his laboratory, and have raised over $35M in private capital and grant funding, and received FDA Breakthrough Device designation. Prof. Webster's research interests include surgical robotics, medical device design, image-guided surgery, and continuum robotics. He is a recipient of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career Award, the National Science Foundation CAREER award, the Robotics Science and Systems Early Career Spotlight Award, IEEE Volz award, and the award for Excellence in Teaching from Vanderbilt University. In addition to his primary appointment in Mechanical Engineering, he holds appointments at Vanderbilt in Electrical Engineering, Otolaryngology, Neurological Surgery, Urologic Surgery, and Medicine at Vanderbilt. Fifteen of his prior trainees are now in faculty positions. He directs the Mid-South REACH Hub, a large NIH entrepreneurship center, and teaches entrepreneurship at Vanderbilt, and serves as Associate Provost at Vanderbilt.

Erik Pupo

Director, Commercial Health IT Advisory, Guidehouse Insights

Erik Pupo is a Senior Executive in Guidehouse’s Commercial Healthcare segment, based out of the Miami office. Erik has over 25 years of experience in healthcare leadership roles, including vendor, industry, and advisory. He is the Director of Guidehouse’s Commercial Health IT Advisory practice in North America. He was previously the healthcare cybersecurity director at Amazon and prior to that served as the Chief Information Officer at Columbia University Medical Center. His expertise is focused on healthcare technology transformation initiatives leveraging cloud, automation, artificial intelligence, and data management to support value-based care implementation and to advise on the transition to new value-based IT operating models and strategies. Erik has worked to help clients create new IT strategy and operating models and works across healthcare startups to evaluate healthcare IT products and solutions for providers and payers. He is recognized as an industry thought leader in numerous healthcare fields, including healthcare interoperability, digital health, healthcare cloud, value-based care, health information security, and population health.

Ken Goldberg, Ph.D.

Chief Scientist, Ambi Robotics + Jacobi Robotics | William S. Floyd Jr. Distinguished Chair of Engineering, UC Berkeley

Ken Goldberg (IEEE Fellow, 2005) is William S. Floyd Distinguished Chair of Engineering at UC Berkeley and Chief Scientist of Ambi Robotics and Jacobi Robotics. Ken leads research in robotics and automation: grasping, manipulation, and learning for applications in warehouses, industry, homes, agriculture, and robot-assisted surgery. He is Professor of IEOR with appointments in EECS and Art Practice. Ken is Chair of the Berkeley AI Research (BAIR) Steering Committee (60 faculty) and is co-founder and Editor-in-Chief emeritus of the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE). He has published ten US patents and over 400 refereed papers. He has presented over 600 invited lectures to academic and corporate audiences.

Danyal Fer, M.D.

General and Minimally Invasive Surgeon, David Grant Medical Center

Dr. Danyal Fer is a Major in the US Air Force and minimally invasive general surgeon practicing at David Grant Medical Center at Travis AFB. Previously, Dr. Fer served as the Lead Physician in Applied Research at Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices, where he led initiatives in robotic and AI system development for surgical applications. He was also a collaborator at the Automation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked on autonomous surgical systems. His work bridges military medicine, academic research, and industry innovation, with the goal of advancing the transmission of surgical knowledge and action using robotics and artificial intelligence.

David Hexner

Vice President of Research and Development, Lifeward

David Hexner joined ReWalk in November of 2011 and currently serves as Vice President of Research and Development. David has played an integral role in the development of both the ReWalk Exoskeleton and the ReStore Exo-suit, beginning first in the role of Software and Algorithms Engineer, then that of Program Manager and finally of Director of Research and Development prior to joining the management team in 2021. Mr. Hexner received his Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering, as well as his Masters of Business Administration from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Prior to joining ReWalk, David previously worked at Zoran Electronics which used to be a leading player in the semiconductor market which developed and sold chip sets for consumer electronics.

Erik Barnett

Partner - Healthcare, Guidehouse Insights

Erik Barnett serves as Partner, Healthcare, for Guidehouse Insights. He spearheads initiatives across the firm’s commercial Health practice to help healthcare leaders transform the consumer and employee experience and drive growth through the use of AI and GenAI. Barnett brings more than two decades of experience as both a clinician and business leader, which he uses to inform AI data strategy, develop centers of excellence, and integrate next-generation technologies into client engagements.

Brian Fink

Product Manager, Aerotech

Brian Fink is Aerotech’s Product Manager for stages, motors, hexapods, and other mechanical devices. With more than 15 years of experience in precision motion control, he has held roles in research and development, applications engineering, sales, and marketing. Brian holds a master’s degree in mechanical engineering and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh.

David Galus

Director of Product Marketing, Dedicated Computing

David Galus has more than 20 years of experience in AI and embedded computing technology and currently serves as the Director of Product Marketing for Dedicated Computing. His roles have focused on internal development and external marketing of technical solutions and capabilities, segment strategy development, and global sales support and discovery with partners from edge to cloud. David’s primary vertical segments of expertise include healthcare and life sciences and retail. Prior to Dedicated Computing, he held various positions of increasing responsibility in technical sales and marketing roles with Intel. David holds a master’s degree in bioelectrical engineering and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan.

Peter van Beek

Business Development Manager – Medical, maxon

Peter van Beek heads up maxon’s Medical Business Unit in the USA. As Business Development Manager, he is responsible for managing and promoting maxon products used for medical device markets. Peter has been with maxon for more than 28 years, working as a Regional Sales Engineer covering the Midwestern States before taking on his current role as Business Development Manager. He holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a master's degree in paper technology from the Helsinki University of Technology.

Hao Su, Ph.D.

Director, Center of Assistive and Personal Robotics for Independent Living | Associate Professor, New York University

Dr. Hao Su is an Associate Professor at the New York University and the Director of Center of Assistive and Personal Robotics for Independent Living (APRIL). He was an associate professor at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, after previously serving as the Irwin Zahn Endowed Assistant Professor at City College of the City University of New York. He was a Research Scientist at Philips Research North America where he designed robots for lung surgery, and then a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. He obtained Ph.D. degree on Surgical Robotics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Dr. Su received NSF CAREER Award, Switzer Distinguished Fellow by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Toyota Mobility Challenge Discover Award, the Best Medical Robotics Paper Runner-up Award in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Best Student Paper Award, Dynamic Systems & Control Division, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and Philips Innovation Transfer Award. He received the Advanced Simulation & Training Award from the Link Foundation and Dr. Richard Schlesinger Award from the American Society for Quality. His work was published in IEEE Transactions on Robotics, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, Nature, Science Robotics, Nature Machine Intelligence, Nature Communications, and Science Advances. He serves as Technical Editor of IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, associate editor of IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine (RAM), IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL), IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board for the International Journal of Medical Robotics and Computer-Assisted Surgery. In addition, Dr. Su is the Conference Chair of the Mechatronics Technical Committee, Dynamic Systems & Control Division, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and the Co-Chair of the Technical Committee on Mechanisms and Design, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS). He holds patents on surgical robotics and socially assistive robots.

Jake Abbott, Ph.D.

Director - Magnetic & Medical Robotics Lab, University of Utah

Dr. Jake J. Abbott is the Director of the Magnetic & Medical Robotics (M&M) Lab at the University of Utah, where he also serves as a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and an Adjunct Professor in the Kahlert School of Computing. Many of M&M Lab's projects incorporate magnetic technologies in robotics, with a large focus on the use of magnetic fields to dexterously manipulate objects without any physical contact, especially in medical applications of robotics, including both surgery/therapy and rehabilitation/assistance. Dr. Abbot's research interests include magnetic manipulation, medical robotics, haptics, and microrobotics. He has been recognized for his contributions to the field, receiving the Best Paper Award in Medical Robotics at ICRA 2017 and securing a $385K NIH grant for telerobotic eye surgery research. Dr. Abbott holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Johns Hopkins University and conducted postdoctoral research at the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at ETH Zurich.