Dr. Simaan has successfully led a multi-disciplinary team at Vanderbilt University in a proposal to develop haptic training and skill assessment tools for low-resource settings in developing countries. More news is coming later, but the performance sites for the leap SAVE program are available at https://wellcomeleap.org/save/ . 

We are also looking for Ph.D. students and postdocs to support this activity. 

Dr. Simaan was elected by the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society as a Fellow in 2020. His elevation to this rank is cited "or contributions to dexterous continuum robotics for
surgery".  Less than 0.1% of voting members are selected annually for this member grade elevation. More details are provided here.

Dr. Simaan was also selected among the Top 25 voices in healthcare robotics, voted by technology leaders in surgical robotics, BIS research, 2020. More details are provided here.

ARMA graduate students Andrew Orekhov, Garrison Johnston, and Colette Abah won the ASME design competition held as part of ASME IDETC conference. Their first-place prize is for a design report and a presentation related to the NSF project on In-Situ Continuum RObots for collaborative manufacturing. Congratulations Andrew, Garrison, and Colette. 

Neel Shihora will be presenting his work on robotics for remote Cricothyrotomy at IEEE IROS'2021 and at MHSRS'2021. The titles of the two papers are:

• Shihora, N., Yasin, R., Walsh, R., Simaan, N., "Feasibility of Remote Landmark Identification for Cricothyrotomy Using Robotic Palpation", accepted for publication in IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS’2021).
• Shihora, N., Walsh, R., Simaan, N., "Feasibility Study of Assistive Telemanipulation Methods for Identifying the Cricothyrotomy Landmark Using Robotic Palpation", accepted for presentation in Military Health System Research Symposium, MHSRS’21, Aug 23-26, 2021.

Colette Abah will present her work on micro-catheter design optimization for ischemic stroke treatment in the upcoming IEEE International Symposium on Medical Robotics (ISMR'2021). Her work provides design guidelines based on a new framework for kinematic modeling and path planning for optimal design and choice of catheters for specific vascular anatomy. 

• Abah, C., Chitale, R., Simaan, N., "Image-Guided Optimization of Robotic Catheters for Patient-Specific Endovascular Intervention," accepted for publication in IEEE International Symposium on Medical Robotics (ISMR’2021), Atlanta, GA, 2021.