We seek to save lives and help doctors heal the sick through new engineering inventions and scientific discoveries.

Our goal is to make an impact in medicine, and we work everywhere along the invention-translation continuum: From initial blue sky research leading to inventions and patents (the lab has filed 59 patents with 30 licensed for commercialization), all the way to clinical translation (many devices from the lab have reached human clinical trials) and commercialization through the lab’s two startup companies and companies licensing our patents.

The MED Lab is a laboratory in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Vanderbilt University headed by Principal Investigator, Dr. Robert J. Webster III, and is a charter member of the Vanderbilt Initiative in Surgery and Engineering.

14 lab alumni are now in faculty positions. 8 people from the lab work in Nashville-area startup companies, including the lab’s two startups, Virtuoso Surgical, Inc. and EndoTheia, Inc. Many others work at large medical device/robotics companies including Intuitive Surgical, Medtronic, etc., and in other interesting jobs.

If you are a prospective Ph.D. student or Postdoc interested in joining us, click here.