Job description
Minimally invasive surgery aims to develop treatments for patients that come with high accuracy but minimal intervention. Yet, state-of-the-art procedures still require incision or catheterization of the body, and many tools and physical control of the equipment and introducing hard materials that do not resemble the nature of the tissue surrounding it, such as a cardiovascular stent. This PhD project will design, synthesize, and operate a new multi-responsive soft miniaturized robot/device to replace current stentgraft materials and placement procedures for aneurysm treatment. The robot is envisioned to be inserted via injection, translocated to the sight of function, and be placed, controlled, and tuned on the spot using completely non-invasive external triggers. Towards this end, we will create new hydrogel robots bearing various implemented modes of responsiveness enabling magnetic locomotion, MRI visibility, and induced reshaping of the robot while medical ultrasound is able to visualize the robot and trigger on-demand release of payload from. Introduction of bio-orthogonal chemistry will enhance tissue interaction and controlling/altering hydrogel-chemical properties via external triggers such as light. As part of on-going efforts within HTRIC, this project will open up new avenues for the design of minimally invasive interventions, ultimately taking innovation from the bench to bed-side.