Rate My Professor Yash Chitalia

Yash Chitalia is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Louisville's J.B. Speed School of Engineering, serving as Director of the Healthcare Robotics and Telesurgery (HeaRT) Laboratory. He earned a Ph.D. in Robotics from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2021 from the Medical Robotics and Automation Laboratory, where his dissertation focused on robotic guidewires and neuro-endoscopes. Prior to that, he obtained an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in 2013 and a B.E. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Mumbai in 2011. Following his doctoral studies, Chitalia held a Research Fellowship in Cardiac Surgery at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, working in Dr. Pierre Dupont’s Pediatric Cardiac Bioengineering Lab.

Chitalia’s research centers on designing semi-autonomous micro- and meso-scale surgical robots to advance minimally invasive surgery. His work employs micro-scale machining, 3D-printing, and modeling of super-elastic structures to create dexterous continuum robots for pediatric congenital cardiac conditions, cancer biopsy, and neurovascular applications. Key publications include "Using robotics to move a neurosurgeon’s hands to the tip of the needle" in Science Robotics (2023), "Model-Based Design of the COAST Robotic Guidewire" in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (2023), and "Modeling Tendon-Driven Concentric-Tube Robots" presented at the International Symposium on Medical Robotics (2023). He received the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award in February 2023. Chitalia has delivered invited talks at University of Louisville Health Neurosurgery (November 2023), Duke Medical Robotics Symposium (October 2023), and Wisconsin Robotics Seminar Series (April 2023), presented a plenary at the 6th International Conference of Magnetic Surgery and Life Science (May 2023), and organized a workshop on "Data vs. Model in Medical Robotics" at IROS 2023.