Since 2019 July, Ziqiu ZENG has been a PhD student in the team.

His research work is focused on the computation cost and mechanical behavior of FEM simulations. Collaborating with Hadrien Cortecuisse, he has implemented a fast matrix assembly method in SOFA.

Recently he is working on the problem of contact in FEM simulation. A method is being developed which could potentially solve the problems in grasping simulations.

Paul Baksic joined the team in 2018 on the 1st of October as a PhD student.
His subject consists in the automatization of percutaneous procedures, relying on FEM simulations. Following the work of Yinoussa Adagolodgo [1], he fist proposed an optimization of the simulation used to compute the robot command [2].
Then, he managed to take the practitioner back into the control loop by providing him full control over the insertion [3] while still taking advantage of the autonomous algorithm.

Maciej received his Ph.D. in 2020. His work focused on searching new control methods for collaborative robotics and physical human-robot interactions for modern applications in Industry 4.0 as well as in robot-assisted medical interventions.

He played an important role in the Sperry project in the development of strategies to use our methods on the Kuka robots closely with Paul.
He also supported the team in developing 3D printing solutions for the robotic experiment ranging from a needle holder to a platform generating a respiratory motion.

Julia started in the lab as an intern from March 2019 to August 2019. During this internship, she worked on mesh cutting algorithms.
She was then hired as a research engineer from September 2019 to the end of December 2019.
During those 3 months, she worked on needle-tissue interaction modelization, especially tearing phenomena.

M.Sc. Pedro Perrusi joined the team as an intern in February 2020 to develop his master thesis. In September 2020 he presented his thesis and returned to the team as Research Engineer. His main subjects of interest are computer vision and medical image registration to allow for autonomous robotic needle insertion experiments.

Virginie joined the Sperry team in March 2021 as an intern for her master thesis : Integration of a force sensor for online estimation of tissue elasticity during robotic needle insertion. She is completing her studies as Biomedical engineering student at Télécom Physique Strasbourg, with master in Robotics and Control.

Rayan BOUNOUA joined the team in 2020 on the 24th of February as an intern to develop his master thesis. He worked on augmented reality on tablet for non-rigid liver registration. In September 2020 he presented his thesis and thus obtained his engineering degree. His main areas of interest are medical imaging, computer vision and the study of medical devices.

Anna Cazzaniga is a biomedical engineering student at Politecnico di Milano where she was able to orient her studies in the field of Electronic Technologies developing a particular interest in neuroengineering and machine learning. She joined the team in October 2020 to develop her master’s degree thesis starting from the paper “Robotic needle insertion in moving soft tissues using constraint-based inverse Finite Element simualtion” by Baksic et al. for a further development in the field of neural networks.