{"id":40013,"date":"2023-12-04T07:51:33","date_gmt":"2023-12-04T12:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/?page_id=40013"},"modified":"2024-03-06T10:24:17","modified_gmt":"2024-03-06T15:24:17","slug":"cise-seminar-loris-fichera-wpi","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/cise-seminar-loris-fichera-wpi\/","title":{"rendered":"CISE Seminar: Loris Fichera, Worcester Polytechnic Institute"},"content":{"rendered":"

Date: Friday, March 29, 2024
\nTime: 3:00pm \u2013 4:00pm
\nLocation: 8 Saint Mary’s Street, PHO 203<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Assistant Professor Loris Fichera, Worcester Polytechnic Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Loris Fichera<\/strong><\/span>
\nAssistant Professor<\/span>
\n Worcester Polytechnic Institute<\/span><\/h4>\n

Next Generation Surgical Robots for Energy-Based Surgery<\/strong><\/span>
\nInterventional medicine is entering an exciting new era where the adoption of energy-based instruments will enable new micro- (or even non)<\/span>-invasive treatment options for many medical conditions that would normally require a traditional surgical procedure. In this talk, I will focus on lasers (no pun intended) and their untapped potential in surgery. Until today, the role of lasers in surgery has been mostly restricted to tissue cutting (laser scalpels<\/span>), which roboticists have supported by developing micro-mechanical systems for accurate, tremor-free laser aiming. As medical science evolves, we keep discovering new ways in which laser light can be used for surgical treatment: There are new types of laser-based treatment being pioneered where tumor necrosis<\/span> \u2013 not resection! \u2013 is the goal. For these treatments to work, besides laser aiming, it is vital to also monitor and control the interactions between the laser and the tissue. These interactions, however, are notoriously hard to control, both by humans and machines, as they involve fast, highly nonlinear physical phenomena that can be challenging to model and even perceive adequately. My research vision is to enable a new generation of surgical robots capable of autonomously monitoring and controlling surgical laser-tissue interactions. I believe that these robots will help us to fully realize the potential of lasers in surgery, leading to the development of new incision- and blood-less procedures. After a brief overview of my work so far on this topic, I will discuss open research questions in sensing and control and connect these questions to current unmet clinical needs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Loris Fichera<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>is an Assistant Professor of Robotics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). His research expertise is in surgical robotics and image-guided surgery. He received a BS\/MS in Computer Engineering from the University of Catania, Italy (2011), and a PhD in Robotics from the University of Genova, Italy (joint PhD School with the Italian Institute of Technology, 2015). His doctoral dissertation focused on novel methods to predict and control laser-tissue interactions in robotic laser microsurgery. Prior to joining WPI in 2017, Dr. Fichera was a postdoctoral researcher at Vanderbilt University, where he conducted research on image-guided ear surgery.Dr. Fichera\u2019s research has been recognized by multiple awards and nominations, including the National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2023), the Best Student Paper Award in the Robotics track at SPIE Medical Imaging 2021 (awarded to one of his students) and the Young Investigator Award of the International Society for Computer-Aided Surgery (ISCAS) in 2016. He was finalist for the Best Medical Robotics Paper Award at ICRA 2015 and for the \u201cThree-in-Five\u201d competition at the Design of Medical Devices Conference (DMD) in 2019. Also in 2019, he received the Rho Beta Epsilon Honor Society Award for Excellence in Robotics Education.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Faculty Host:<\/strong> Sheila Russo<\/a>
\nStudent Hosts:<\/strong> Akua Kodie Dickson & Franco Juli\u00e1 Wise <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Date: Friday, March 29, 2024 Time: 3:00pm \u2013 4:00pm Location: 8 Saint Mary’s Street, PHO 203 Loris Fichera Assistant Professor Worcester Polytechnic Institute Next Generation Surgical Robots for Energy-Based Surgery Interventional medicine is entering an exciting new era where the adoption of energy-based instruments will enable new micro- (or even non)-invasive treatment options for many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22390,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40013"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22390"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40013"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40657,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40013\/revisions\/40657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}