WELCOME TO THE SOROH CONFERENCE
2027 speakers
Alphabetical list
Dr Shweta Aggarwal
Ms Shweta Aggarwal is a Consultant Plastic Surgeon with a focus on clinical innovation, translational research and digital health. Shweta qualified from medical school in Delhi, ranking first nationally in the Indian postgraduate medical entrance examination, before completing surgical training in the UK. Her published work covers novel oncoplastic and reconstructive approaches, particularly chest wall perforator flaps and hybrid reconstruction. She is the inventor of InciSure®, a patent-pending, operator-agnostic incision device developed to improve accuracy in soft-tissue surgery, with potential applications in robotic platforms. Shweta is part of the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme and co-founder of Anvega, a healthcare AI company whose first project, TARA, provides pathway-specific support to breast cancer patients. Underpinning all of this is her commitment to clinician-led innovation and to fostering collaboration between surgeons, engineers and digital health partners.
Prof Farshid Alambeigi
Dr. Farshid Alambeigi is the Director of Robotics, Imaging, and Autonomous Surgery at the Bookout Center at Houston Methodist Research Institute and an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Rice University. He leads interdisciplinary research at the intersection of robotics, artificial intelligence, medical imaging, and minimally invasive surgery to develop the next generation of intelligent robotic systems for diagnosis and intervention.
Before joining Rice University and Houston Methodist, Dr. Alambeigi was an Associate Professor and Leland Barclay Fellow in the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, where he was also a core faculty member of Texas Robotics. He held a joint appointment in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and served as a faculty member in the Department of Surgery at Dell Medical School, fostering close collaborations between engineering and clinical practice.
Dr. Alambeigi received his Ph.D. (2019) in Mechanical Engineering and his M.S. (2017) in Robotics from Johns Hopkins University. He was named a Siebel Scholar in recognition of his academic excellence and leadership. He is the recipient of the NIH NIBIB Trailblazer Award (2020) for pioneering flexible robotic systems and implants for minimally invasive spinal surgery, and the prestigious NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2022) to develop an in vivo robotic bioprinting platform for regenerative medicine. His work has also been recognized with the UT Austin Faculty Innovation Award, the Faculty Innovation Ambassador Award, the Outstanding Research Award by an Assistant Professor, the Walker Scholar Award, and numerous other honors. He serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), and IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine (RAM).
His research has received broad international recognition, earning the Best Paper Award in Medical Robotics at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2026), Best Paper Awards at SPIE Medical Imaging 2025 and the IEEE International Symposium on Medical Robotics (ISMR 2023), and Best Paper Finalist recognitions at IEEE RoboSoft 2026 and SPIE Medical Imaging in 2024 and 2026.
Dr. Alambeigi directs the Advanced Robotic Technologies for Surgery (ARTS) Laboratory, jointly spanning Rice University and Houston Methodist Research Institute. His research integrates robotics, artificial intelligence, computer vision, medical imaging, sensing, and advanced manufacturing to create dexterous continuum robots, soft robotic systems, and intelligent medical devices for endoluminal, endovascular, orthopedic, and general surgical applications. His group develops verification-driven autonomous surgical systems capable of perception, reasoning, planning, and safe execution in complex clinical environments. Through this work, he is advancing the vision of Surgineering- the seamless convergence of engineering, artificial intelligence, robotics, imaging, and clinical sciences to transform how surgical technologies are conceived, developed, validated, and translated into patient care.
Husnara Begum
Husnara Begum was diagnosed with Juvenile Idiopathic Rheumatoid Arthritis aged nine. As a result, she has had multiple joint replacements as well as surgery to her neck. She uses an electric wheelchair for long distances and relies on a vast array of gadgets to help her maintain as much independence as possible. Notwithstanding her various health challenges, Husnara went onto qualify as a corporate lawyer before switching careers to journalism. She now runs her own career coaching and business skills training business. Throughout her life, Husnara has campaigned and advocated for the rights of disabled people. She is a firm believer that with the right support network and better access other people like her will also be able to achieve so much more with their lives and reach their potential.
Prof Martin Birchall
Martin Birchall (Director, UCL). Martin is a practising laryngologist (throat surgeon) and experienced translational research leader. He developed new paradigms related to laryngeal transplantation and reanimation, and organ tissue-engineering and has led research projects across the translational pipeline from discovery science to early-stage clinical trials.
Prof Quentin Boehler
Quentin Boehler is an Assistant Professor (Tenure Track) of Robotics at ETH Zurich in the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, where he leads the Medical Robotics Lab.
He received an engineering degree in mechatronics from INSA Strasbourg (2013), followed by an M.Sc. (2013) and a Ph.D. (2016) in robotics from the University of Strasbourg. His doctoral research focused on tensegrity mechanisms and variable‑stiffness devices for MR‑compatible robotic systems. From 2017 to 2025, he was a postdoctoral associate and later a senior researcher at the Multi‑Scale Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich, working on magnetically guided devices and electromagnetic navigation technologies for medical applications.
His current research addresses unmet clinical needs in surgical and medical procedures, with an emphasis on the design, control, and simulation of robotic systems for therapeutic and diagnostic interventions.
He has co‑authored more than 50 scientific publications in leading journals such as Science, Science Robotics, Advanced Science, and Nature Communications. He is actively engaged in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and currently serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.
Prof Thomas Booth
Thomas C Booth is Professor of Neuroradiology in the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences at King’s College London and an Honorary Consultant Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiologist at King’s College Hospital. His research sits at the interface of clinical neuroradiology, artificial intelligence and robotics, with three principal areas of interest:
- AI-assisted brain abnormality detection
- AI-assisted endovascular robotics
- AI in neuro-oncology.
He trained in neuroradiology at King’s College Hospital and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge, where he investigated imaging biomarkers of brain-tumour treatment response and machine-learning approaches to MRI.
He leads a multidisciplinary research group of clinicians, data scientists and engineers translating AI from methodological development into prospective clinical evaluation.
Professor Booth was Chief Investigator of the £1 million MRC-funded MIDI study, largest UK neurology study, which evaluated AI-based brain MRI abnormality detection in more than 37,000 participants across 44 UK sites, and is Chief Investigator of the £5.7 million MRC TRIAGE programme, evaluating AI-assisted MRI triage in a multicentre clinical trial. His wider research includes AI-powered portable MRI, glioblastoma imaging and radiogenomics, and the development of AI-assisted and autonomous robotic systems for mechanical thrombectomy. This work has led to multiple publications and patent applications, including hierarchical multi-agent reinforcement learning approaches for endovascular navigation.
Professor Booth holds a number of national and international leadership roles:
- UK Neurointerventional Group Research Lead, where he leads a national research programme spanning all 27 UK interventional neuroradiology centres
- Royal College of Radiologists Clinical Radiology AI Faculty Lead
- Member of the European Association of Neuro-Oncology Scientific Committee
- UK representative within the international RANO AI group
He also co-leads imaging biomarker activity within the European Net4Brain COST Action. He holds NIHR imaging leadership roles and previously served on the NIHR Research for Patient Benefit committee and as Chair of the Radiological Research Trust.
His contributions to clinical and academic neuroradiology have been recognised by the inaugural Royal College of Radiologists Outstanding Researcher Award, the British Society of Neuroradiology 50th Anniversary Gold Medal, and National Clinical Excellence Awards. He is regularly invited to speak internationally on clinical AI, neuro-oncology and robotic neurointervention, including keynote lectures for the American Society of Neuroradiology and British Society of Neuroradiology.
Dr Dana D. Damian
Dana D. Damian received her diploma in computer science and engineering from the Technical University Timisoara, Romania in 2007. In the same year she joined the Intelligent Systems Laboratory at University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, to work on her diploma thesis with Prof. Nicu Sebe and Prof. Mihai Micea. At the end of 2007, she became a PhD candidate at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland under the supervision of Prof. Rolf Pfeifer.
In 2011 she was a Visiting Scholar for one year at the Haptics Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, US and at the Collaborative Haptics in Robotics and Medicine, Stanford University, U.S.A. working with Prof. Allison Okamura. In 2012 she was a Visiting Scholar at the Soft Machines Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University, U.S.A., working with Prof. Carmel Majidi. From 2013 to 2015, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard University, Boston, USA, working with Prof. Pierre Dupont in the Pediatric Cardiac Bioengineering Laboratory. Since 2011, she is also a founder of the Private Library “Damian” in Romania.
Prof Prokar Dasgupta
Professor Prokar Dasgupta is a clinician-scientist whose career started over 30 years ago when he began studying the immunology of a parasitic disease called Leishmaniasis.
Professor Dasgupta was recently appointed as the Foundation Professor of Surgery for King’s Health Partners in 2020 and has been a Consultant Urologist at Guy’s Hospital since 2002. He became the first Professor of Robotic Surgery and Urological Innovation at King’s in 2009 and subsequently the Chairman of the King’s-Vattikuti Institute of Robotic Surgery.
Contributing to academic excellence, Professor Dasgupta pioneered robotic urological surgery at Guy’s Hospital and leads on surgical simulation within the UK and internationally. In 2010 and 2018 he was named one of the top ten prostate cancer surgeons in the United Kingdom by the Daily Mail.
His main basic research interest is in the immunology of prostate cancer and he is part of the Prostate Cancer Research Centre at King’s. Professor Dasgupta is also credited with describing an innovative technique of injecting Botulinum toxin (Botox) with a flexible telescope to target bladder nerves, a method which has been named after him and helped millions of patients worldwide.
He was awarded the Fellowship of the Linnaean Society (FLS) in 2017 and the Fellowship of King’s College (FKC) in 2018.
In 2020 he completed nearly a decade as Editor-in-Chief of a 90-year old journal, the British Journal of Urology International (BJUI) after transforming it into one of the most read surgical journals on the web.
He has been a Trustee and raised funds for a number of charities including the Malcolm Coptcoat Trust, The Prostate Cancer Research Centre, UK and The Prostate Cancer Foundation in Kolkata, India.
Prof Elena De Momi
Prof Alicia El Haj
Alicia El Haj is the Interdisciplinary Professor of Cell Engineering at the Healthcare Technologies Institute and Director of the Institute of Translational Medicine, University of Birmingham.
She is a leading figure in Bioengineering and Regenerative Medicine and has been involved in bringing together interdisciplinary groups within biomedicine, physical sciences and engineering, interested in aspects of cell and tissue engineering and regenerative medicine to move innovative new cell based therapies to the clinic. She has published over 200 publications in developing novel tissue engineering approaches using biomechanics, bioreactors, and imaging systems for the delivery of cell therapies to the clinic with funding from EPSRC, MRC, BBSRC, Versus Arthritis and ERC Advanced Grant
Alicia actively engages in public events having presented ‘Remote Control Healing’ at the Café Scientifique in Royal Society London and at the ‘Next Big Thing’ at the Hay Festival 2017.
Alicia El Haj is part of the Healthcare Technologies Institute (HTI), an interdisciplinary network of over 70 academics working together to advance new technologies and treatments that encourage better tissue healing and rehabilitation tools. The HTI brings together leading experts from a variety of disciplines across the University of Birmingham, including chemical engineering, biomedical science, computer science, applied mathematics, chemistry and physics. Researchers across campus are working collaboratively to speed up the translation of new discoveries into health applications.
Prof Fanny Ficuciello
Fanny Ficuciello received the Laurea degree magna cum laude in Mechanical Engineering and the PhD degree in Computer and Automation Engineering, both at the University of Naples Federico II. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Robotics and Control at the University of Naples Federico II. She is responsible for the scientific research in medical robotics at the Robotics Lab of ICAROS Centre (Interdepartmental Centre for Advances in Robotic Surgery). She is the Vice-director of the ICAROS Centre. She is the scientific director of the Biomimetics and Biohybrid Robotics Lab, Dept. of EE & IT, Univ. Naples Federico II, Italy (https://prisma.dieti.unina.it/index.php/facilities/medical lab-2). She has published more than 150 journal and conference papers, book chapters, and holds four medical device patents. Since 2008, she has been a member of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, and in 2017, she was upgraded to IEEE Senior Member. From 2018 to 2022, she was on the Technology Committee of the European Association of Endoscopic Surgery (EAES). She served as Associate Editor for the Transactions on Robotics (T-Ro), the Journal of Intelligent Service Robotics (JIST) and the Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics (TMRB). In January 2026, she was appointed Editor-in-Chief of Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics (TMRB).
Prof Maria Elena Giannaccini
Dr Maria Elena Giannaccini’s work focuses on designing soft robotic devices. She specialises in wearable devices, tactile sensing and human-robot interaction. Her Master’s thesis focused on the control of a soft, variable stiffness actuator conducted at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Italy, as part of the EU-funded OCTOPUS project. In 2015, she obtained her PhD in Robotics at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory as an Early Stage Researcher in the Marie-Curie project INTRO. Her PhD focused on developing safe, variable stiffness robotic devices. She worked at the University of Bristol on the soft, bioinspired Tactip sensor and in developing a soft robotics artificial larynx. In 2019, Maria Elena was appointed as a Lecturer in Robotics at the University of Aberdeen, where she pioneered research in soft robotics and set up the robotics laboratory. Work in soft robotics from her group was featured by the BBC. In 2025, she joined the School of Computer Science and the UKRI-funded Somabotics project at the University of Nottingham as an associate professor.
Prof Liang He
Liang He is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford and an Official Fellow at Kellogg College. His research focuses on soft robotics, biosensors, haptic and VR, and wearable robotics. In particular, he is interested in exploring embodied-AI solutions for healthcare and biomedical applications. He obtained his PhD at Imperial College London with a focus on medical robotics. From 2017 to 2020, He has been a key researcher in the EPSRC Motion and RoboPatient projects, where he develops virtual simulators and wearables for medical training. In early 2021, he joined the Oxford Robotics Institute with the Embodied Intelligence Program to develop soft-sensing skin for robots working with humans. In 2022, he was elected co-chair of the Research Staff Forum at the MPLS Division and appointed as a member of the Research Staff Consultation Group at Oxford. He was also awarded an MPLS Enterprise and Innovation Fellowship and an Ideas2Impact Fellowship from the Saïd Business School. In 2023, he joined the Institute of Biomedical Engineering as an Associate Professor.
Professor Liang He is also a core member of the academic team at The Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology, where he is working to develop innovative AI and wearable robotics technologies. These advancements aim to monitor, prevent, and predict movement-related injuries in sports.
Prof Sebastien Ourselin
Professor Sebastien Ourselin FREng FMedSci is the Head of the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences and Assistant Principal (Innovation) at King’s College London.
He is also the Director of Digital Health and Data Science for King’s Health Partners, the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering and the AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare.
Alongside Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, he leads the establishment of a MedTech Hub, located at St Thomas’ campus. The vision for the Hub is to create a unique ecosystem, enabling academia, industry and the NHS to work in synergy and develop health technologies (including medical devices), workforce and operational improvements that will be of global significance.
He has over 25 years of experience within academia and research organisations (across three countries) and has significant experience in translating and commercialising healthcare technology and in MedTech entrepreneurship.
Prof Jonathan Rossiter
Jonathan is a professor of Robotics and head of the Soft Robotics group at Bristol Robotics Laboratory. Soft robotics is the research and development of novel compliant technologies for robotic systems, medical applications and engineering. These include core technologies such as smart materials and artificial muscles, smart mechanisms and structures, autonomous soft robots, smart skins and tactile interaction devices. In my robotic actuator and artificial muscle research, I have been developing new polymer-composite actuators involving principles of buckling and bi-stability and robots which are inspired by bio-mimetic study of swimming organisms, including bacteria and fish.
Dr Mark Slack
Prof Danail Stoyanov
I am a Professor of Robot Vision at the Department of Computer Science at UCL, Co-Director of the UCL Hawkes Institute, and Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies. I am also a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (FIEEE), the Institute of Engineering and Technology (FIET), the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci), the MICCAI Society (FMICCAI), and the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng). I first studied Computer Systems and Electronics at King’s College London before completing a PhD in Computer Science at Imperial College London, where I specialised in medical image computing. My research is focused on developing surgical robotics and artificial intelligence for improving minimally invasive interventions.
Prof Pietro Valdastri
Pietro Valdastri is Full Professor and Chair in Robotics and Autonomous Systems at the University of Leeds. He directs the Science and Technologies Of Robotics in Medicine (STORM) Lab, focusing on intelligent robots to fight cancer, the Institute of Robotics, Autonomous System and Sensing (IRASS), and the Robotics at Leeds network. He received his Laurea degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Pisa in 2001 and his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in 2006. After the PhD, he became Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the BioRobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna. In 2011, Prof Valdastri moved to Vanderbilt University as an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering until 2016, when he relocated to Leeds.
He has published more than 200 peer reviewed journal papers in the field of medical robotics and has been principal investigator on grants in excess of $27M supported by NSF, NIH, ERC, EU-H2020, Cancer Research UK, The Royal Society, EPSRC, ARIA, Innovate UK and industry, including the NSF CAREER Award with the proposal “Lifesaving Capsule Robots” in 2015, the ERC Consolidator Grant Award with the proposal “NoLiMiTs – Novel Lifesaving Magnetic Tentacles” in 2019, and the KUKA Innovation Award for his robotic colonoscopy platform in 2019. Prof. Valdastri is a Royal Society Wolfson Research Fellow, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Editor for Medical and Rehabilitation Robotics of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, and a member of the steering committee of the International Society for Medical Innovation and Technology (iSMIT). STORM Lab’s research has been featured by several news outlets, including the BBC, The Times, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, New Scientist, The Spectator, WIRED, IEEE Spectrum, Medgadget, Daily Mail, The Engineer, Ingenia Magazine, Medical Design Technology Magazine, Medical Xpress, Newswise, NSF Science Now. Prof Valdastri also completed a successful entrepreneurial cycle with WinMedical s.r.l., a company he co-founded in 2009 and that was acquired by a larger enterprise in 2017. He recently started a new company, Atlas Endoscopy Limited, to bring his robotic colonoscopy platform to patients.
Prof Anne Vanhoestenberghe
My research is in the field of neurotechnologies, from technological innovations to their interactions with the (human) nervous system. I develop technology for the next generation of implantable electronic devices to improve the quality of life of patients, through applications such as: neuromodulation and electrical stimulation for the restoration of movement in paralysed muscles; and biopotential recording for control of prosthesis and artificial organs.
I am the Director of MAISI, a national facility for the Manufacture of Active Implants and Surgical Instruments housed at St Thomas’ hospital. MAISI is not only a unique facility to manufacture the most complex medical devices, our team brings together engineers and experts in regulatory affairs to support researchers, whether in academia or SMEs, to bring their ideas to the first tests in humans.
I trained as an engineer in Belgium (ULB) and the Netherlands (TUEindhoven), then had the opportunity to undertake a PhD under the supervision of Prof Donaldson in the Implanted Devices Group at UCL. I have worked in Germany (IMTEK, Freiburg) and Australia (UNSW, Sydney), where I was fortunate to meet some of the most influential people in my career.
I am also a keen teacher with a concern for Diversity Equality and Inclusivity, who actively seeks new strategies to develop more inclusive learning spaces and improve the university experience of non-mainstream students. I have been an active member of the International Microelectronics Assembly and Packaging Society (IMAPS-UK) since 2012.