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Job Description

Are you ready to be a part of breakthrough research group cutting across robotics and medicine?

Michael Yip, Ph.D., is a recognized leader in surgical and medical robotics, autonomous surgery, and safety-critical control, and is the Founding co-Director of the Center for Autonomous Robotic Surgery at Cedars-Sinai. His research group's work spans surgical robot autonomy, motion planning, robot learning, humanoid robots, and 3D perception for image-guided intervention. With over 200 peer-reviewed publications in venues spanning Nature, Science Robotics, NeurIPS, and ICRA,  

Under Dr. Yip's leadership, the successful candidate will produce groundbreaking research in the design, methods, and theory of surgical robotic autonomy. Responsibilities will include developing autonomous image-guided surgical robots, 3D computer vision and navigation, robot learning for fine manipulation, humanoid robotics, and human-robot teaming and physical human-robot interaction (pHRI). The position will also draw upon expertise in computer science, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering to implement and trial novel autonomous robotics and navigation systems on hardware, in both benchtop and model environments.

In this role, the Postdoctoral Scientist will become a key member of the Center for Autonomous Robotic Surgery. They will be expected to work independently under the direction of the PI and in close cooperation, as well as consultation, with other research staff and thought-leaders in the field of surgical robotics. The incumbent may be an ongoing member of a research team or may be employed for a limited period of time to contribute high-level skills to a specific research program. 

Primary Job Duties and Responsibilities:

• Produces groundbreaking research in design, methods and theory around surgical robotic autonomy.
• Disseminates research in authored publications at top venues in biomedical engineering, robotics, machine learning and medicine.
• Works within, builds, and/or leads subteams of scientists and engineers in developing next-generation surgical robotics technologies.
• Implements and trials novel autonomous robotics and navigation systems on hardware in benchtop and model environments.
• Trains Staff Research Associates and Research Fellows.
• May assist in the preparation of grant proposals, submissions, publications and presentations, but is not responsible for generating grant funds.
• Analyzes, interprets, summarizes and compiles data.
• Assists in day-to-day laboratory activities.
• Operates and maintains equipment and instruments.

Qualifications

Education:

• Doctorate degree required. PhD or MD/PhD in Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a closely related field.

Experience and Skills:

• Demonstrated expertise in robotics and computer vision research, implemented on real-life systems (required).
• Proven track record of publications as first-author (as well as co-author) papers in robotics, computer vision, and/or machine learning: ICRA, IROS, RSS, T-RO, CoRL, IJRR, CVPR, ICCV, SIGGRAPH, MICCAI, TBME, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, Nature portfolio and Science portfolio.
• Strong quantitative and analytical skills.
• Experience with one or more of: autonomous robot control and planning; robot learning; humanoid robotics; 3D (spatial) computer vision; simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM); medical image-guided robotics; physical human-robot interaction.
• Highly motivated and able to work independently on research projects within the area of specialization.
• Demonstrated aptitude to perform experimental protocols and procedures, including detailed data collection and analysis, and operation and maintenance of specialized equipment.
• Knowledge of safety standards and maintenance of specialized equipment.