Events

Robotics talk by Dr Quentin Boehler, Senior Researcher, ETH Zurich.

Date:	Thursday 2 October 2025 14:00 - 15:00
Location:	Eng Seminar Room

Title: Bridging the Gap Between Robotics Research and Clinical Needs
Speaker: Dr Quentin Boehler
Abstract: In the last fifteen years, medical and surgical robotics have surged, with thousands of clinical systems installed worldwide, and millions of procedures performed. The emergence of tethered and untethered micro-devices for performing complex surgical tasks and accessing deep regions within the human body created unprecedented opportunities to address unmet clinical needs in minimally invasive interventions and targeted drug delivery.
Translating robotics research findings into clinically ready products is challenging and requires a sustained collaboration between clinicians, researchers, and engineers, making it a highly interdisciplinary journey. In this talk, I will share with you some of the past and ongoing efforts I and the members of the Multi-Scale Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich have been deploying to advance robotics research to address unmet clinical needs.
Our research includes the design and control of magnetically actuated soft continuum robots to increase the safety and the dexterity of endoluminal and endovascular navigation, which has the potential to improve a variety of procedures ranging from neurovascular interventions to fetal surgeries. These navigation capabilities also open the way to the local delivery of drug-loaded microrobots for targeted therapies, which is a particularly promising solution to prevent the off-target effects caused by a conventional systemic administration.
Biography:
Dr Quentin Boehler is a Senior Researcher leading the medical robotics activity at the Multi-Scale Robotics Lab, ETH Zurich since 2020.
He was born in Strasbourg in 1990. He received an engineer’s degree in mechatronics from INSA Strasbourg, and an M.Sc. degree in robotics in 2013. He received a Ph.D. degree in robotics in 2016 from the University of Strasbourg, with a doctoral work focused on tensegrity mechanisms and variable stiffness devices for MR-compatible robotics. He was awarded the Best thesis Award from the research commission of the University of Strasbourg, and the First Prize at the 2016 Ph.D. thesis awards by the French Robotics Research Group.
He joined the Multi-Scale Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich in 2017. His current research focuses on magnetic actuation and continuum robots for medical robotics, including the development and analysis of electromagnetic navigation systems, and the simulation, control and localization of soft magnetic devices. The latest robotic platform that the group developed, called Navion, was awarded the Best Design Award at the 2022 Surgical Robot Challenge organized by the Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery.
He is actively involved in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and is an IEEE Senior member. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. He was also recognized as an Outstanding Reviewer for the journal in 2022 and 2023. Website: msrl.ethz.ch/

Arranged by:	Queen Mary University of London
Contact:	Ketao Zhang
Email:	ketao.zhang@qmul.ac.uk
People:	S.M.Hadi SADATI
Research Centres:	Bioengineering Intelligent Transport