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Research Assistant Professor (RAP) opening on Intelligent Medical Robotics & Medical Image Guidance at EE CUHK Hong Kong

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Applications are invited for appointment as Research Assistant Professor (RAP) in the Department of Electronic Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), to commence as soon as possible for 3 years, with the possibility of renewal subject to satisfactory performance and funding availability.

The appointee will work closely with faculty members who sponsor the RAP in the Department to enhance the existing strengths. Information about relevant research in the Department can be found at http://www.ee.cuhk.edu.hk/. The appointees are expected to be able to have top-tier research outputs and apply for RGC GRF grants and similar external competitive grants. The appointee is also expected to undertake light teaching duties at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

A highly competitive salary commensurate with qualifications and experience will be offered, in addition to annual leave and medical benefits.
 
[RESEARCH AREA OF INTEREST]

Medical Robotics, Image-Guided Procedures,  AI, Perception & Applications:
Particularly, the main areas of interest include AI-assisted endomicroscopic procedures, Medical Image Processing, biorobotics & intelligent systems, multisensory perception, AI learning and control in image-guided procedures, medical mechatronics, continuum, and soft flexible robots and sensors, deployable motion generation, compliance modulation/sensing, cooperative and context-aware flexible/soft sensors/actuators in human environments.

The scholars will have opportunities to work with an interdisciplinary team consisting of clinicians and researchers from robotics, AI & perception, imaging, and medicine.

[QUALIFICATIONS]

* Ph.D. degree in robotics, AI, Computer Science/Engineering, Electronic or Mechanical Engineering, medical physics, automation, or mechatronics background
* Preferably have proven expertise in AI/robots/sensors, instrumentation, intelligent systems, magnetic actuation, ROS, general purpose robotic control
* Fluency in written and spoken English, good organizational skills, the ability to work independently, a strong sense of responsibility, and self-motivation are essential.
* Outstanding academic records/publications or recognitions from worldwide top-ranking institutes
* Postdoctoral experience or equivalent qualification is typically expected
* In-depth research and clear teaching statements are expected
* Successful records in securing research grants and teaching records are preferred though not compulsory

[HOW TO APPLY]

Qualified candidates are invited to express their interests through an email with detailed supporting documents (including CV, objective, research interests, education background, research & teaching statements, representative publications, and demo projects) to Prof. Hongliang Ren ASAP by email

3 papers accepted by MICCAI2022

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Congratulations to the following members for the papers accepted by MICCAI2022:

  • An et al Rethinking Surgical Instrument Segmentation: A Background Image Can Be All You Need
  • Lalith et al Surgical-VQA: Visual Question Answering in Surgical Scenes using Transformer
  • Mengya et al Rethinking Surgical Captioning: End-to-End Window-Based MLP Transformer Using Patches

 

Team awards at The 8th Hong Kong University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition

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Our Team projects Modular Parallel Robot and Magnetic Capsule won awards at The 8th Hong Kong University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, organized by Hong Kong New Generation Cultural Association, on May 27-28, 2022!

Third-place Award: Magnetic Capsule, Presented by Sishen
Merit Award: Modular Parallel Robot, Presented by Wenchao

 

Team presentations at ICRA2022

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Congratulations to the following members for the 3 papers accepted by ICRA2022 and presentations at  ICRA2022:

Godwin: Chip-Less Real-Time Wireless Sensing of Endotracheal Intubation Tubes by Printing and Mounting Conformable Antenna Tag 

Lalith: Global-Reasoned Multi-Task Learning Model for Surgical Scene Understanding

Ling: SIRNet: Fine-Grained Surgical Interaction Recognition

Godwin and Lalith are presenting at ICRA on site this year:
https://www.icra2022.org/

PhD/Postdoc/Visiting Scholar/RA Opportunities on AI, Robotics & Perception at CUHK Hong Kong

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PhD/Postdoc/RA (and Visiting Scholar/Prof/Ph.D.) Opportunities in AI, Robotics & Perception at CUHK Hong Kong

 

[RESEARCH AREA]

 

There are multiple openings for Postdoc/RA (and Visiting Scholar/Prof/Ph.D.) to perform research on Medical Robotics Perception & AI at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK, Hong Kong) starting immediately. Particularly, the main areas of interest include AI-assisted endoscopic diagnosis, biorobotics & intelligent systems, multisensory perception, AI learning and control in image-guided procedures, medical mechatronics, continuum, and soft flexible robots and sensors, deployable motion generation, compliance modulation/sensing, cooperative and context-aware flexible/soft sensors/actuators in human environments. For more details, please refer to the recent publications at Google Scholar or the lab website http://labren.org/.

 

The scholars will have opportunities to work with an interdisciplinary team consisting of clinicians and researchers from robotics, AI & perception, imaging, and medicine.
The salary/remunerations will be highly competitive and commensurate with qualifications and experience (e.g., Postdoc salary will be typically above 4300USD per month plus medical insurance etc.).

[QUALIFICATIONS]

* Background in AI, Computer Science/Engineering, Electronic or Mechanical Engineering, robotics, medical physics, automation, or mechatronics background
* Preferably have hands-on experience in AI/robots/sensors, instrumentation, intelligent systems

* Strong problem-solving, writing, programming, interpersonal, and analytical skills
* Outstanding academic records/publications or recognitions from worldwide top-ranking institutes
* Self-motivated and preferably with strong academic records 

[HOW TO APPLY]

Qualified candidates are invited to express their interests through an email with detailed supporting documents (including CV, transcripts, HK visa status, research interests, education background, experiences, GPA, representative publications, demo projects) to Prof. Hongliang Ren ASAP email: <hlren@ee.cuhk.edu.hk> Due to the significant amount of emails, we seek understandings that only shortlisted candidates will be informed/invited to interview.

Dr. Ren invited to talk at 2021 ISMR workshops

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Dr. Ren was invited to give 2 talks at 2021 ISMR (International Symposium on Medical Robotics) workshops

Talk 1: “Flexible Endoluminal Robotics with Minimal Invasiveness and Exposure” for workshop on “Model-based Design, Sensing, and Control of Continuum
Manipulators and Robotic Flexible Instruments“

Talk 2: “Multidimensional Sensing and Perception for Dexterous Medical Robotics” for workshop on “Sensing and Feedback in Dexterous Medical/Surgical Robotics” respectively:

Related webpages: http://www.ismr.gatech.edu/workshop-program

 

Dr. Ren’s invited keynote speech at 2021 ICRA RoPat workshop on ‘Robot-Assisted Systems for Medical Training’

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Dr. Ren was invited to give a keynote speech at the 2021 ICRA (International Conference on Robotics and Automation) RoPat workshop on ‘Robot-Assisted Systems for Medical Training’
Related webpage:
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/morph-lab/events/ropat21-icra-workshop/

Surgical motion generation and motion understanding towards augmented minimally invasive robotic procedures, Dr. Hongliang Ren

  • Abstract:

    Minimally Invasive Surgeries emerging in modern medical treatment have brought new opportunities and challenges for procedure-specific surgical motion generation and the associated motion understanding, which are the foundation of intelligent robotic manipulation and guiding interventions. Image-guided robotic surgery is expected to increase the precision, flexibility, and repeatability of surgical procedures but poses challenges for medical training.
    This talk will highlight some recent developments in dexterous robotic motion generation with motion understanding towards image-guided minimally invasive procedures. The procedure-specific telerobotic surgical systems can assist surgeons in performing dexterous manipulations using the master-slave console bilateral motion generation & mapping mechanism with variable stiffness.
    Meanwhile, surgical motion understanding aims to learn from the multi-domain surgical perceptions and describe the semantic relationship between instruments and surgical region of interest. Automatically understanding the instrument motions in robotic surgery is crucial to enhance surgical outcomes, enable surgical camera automation, and facilitate surgical training. To that end, we generate the task-aware saliency maps and scanpath of the instruments beyond tracking and segmentation, similar to the surgeon’s visual perception, to get the priority focus on selected surgical instruments. Furthermore, generating a surgical report in robot-assisted surgery, together with surgical scene understanding, can play a significant role in document entry tasks, surgical training, and post-operative analysis.

  • Workshop video material (available at the workshop webpage): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPSOs_ie-ZQ 

Dr. Ren invited to talk at 2021 ICEE workshop on Safeguarding Public Health During Infectious Disease Pandemics Using Medical Robotics, Wearable Technology, and AI

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Dr. Ren was invited to talk at 2021 ICEE workshop on Safeguarding Public Health During Infectious Disease Pandemics Using Medical Robotics, Wearable Technology, and AI. 
Related webpages:
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/2021-icee-workshop

Pilot Study of Trans-oral Robotics to Meet the Minimal Exposure Needs During Infectious Disease Pandemics, Dr. Hongliang Ren

  • Abstract: Swabbing tests have proved to be an effective method of diagnosis for a wide range of diseases. There are high risks of infection for surgeons during the face-to-face COVID-19 swab sampling due to the novel coronavirus’s infectivity. Teleoperated or self-administered swabs can mitigate potential occupational health hazards and reliance on healthcare workers during traditional swabbing procedures. We present some pilot studies on flexible transoral robotic approaches and mechanisms for swab sampling. One prospective robot comprises a flexible manipulator, an endoscope with a monitor, and a master device. A 3-prismatic-universal flexible parallel mechanism with 3 degrees of freedom (DOF) is used to realize the manipulator’s movements. The flexibility of the manipulator improves the safety of testees. Under the vision guidance from the endoscope, a master device can control the swab’s motion attached to the manipulator for sampling. We will also discuss other possible methods to apply closed kinematic chain theory to develop a self-administered viral swab to collect respiratory specimens. The proposed sensorized swab models utilizing hollow polypropylene tubes possess mechanical compliance, simple construction, and inexpensive components. These foldable telescopic structures with multiple kirigami cuts minimize components involved in the system as the characteristics are built directly into the material.

  • Reading material: Paper 1, Paper 2, Paper 3

KS Kumar, TD Nguyen, MS Kalairaj, VM Hema, CJ Cai… – Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 2021
C Li, X Gu, X Xiao, CM Lim, X Duan, H Ren – Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 2021
C Li, X Gu, X Xiao, CM Lim, H Ren – IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, 2019