Professor Dan Stoyanov elected as Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering

The Fellowship represents the UK’s best engineering researchers, innovators, entrepreneurs, business and industry leaders. Each Fellow is elected for making a significant contribution to the profession, by pioneering new innovations, leading progress in business or academia, providing high level advice to government or promoting wider understanding of engineering and technology.

Dan Stoyanov is a Professor of Robot Vision in UCL Computer Science, Director of the Wellcome/EPSRC Centre for Interventional and Surgical Sciences (WEISS) and Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies. His research is focused on developing surgical robotics and artificial intelligence for improving minimally invasive interventions. He is Chief Scientist at Digital Surgery (a Medtronic company) and co-founder of Odin Vision Ltd.

Dan’s research has developed technology to automatically understand surgical images and video. By using artificial intelligence, specifically computer vision, the cameras used during keyhole surgery can measure the position of surgical instruments, the shape of the organs, and activity at the surgical site. This information helps surgeons to better understand their practice and also to navigate the anatomy and make decisions during operations. In the future, it will also become an important source of information for making advanced robotic surgical instruments smarter and safer.

Professor Stoyanov said,  "I am incredibly humbled to be elected as a Fellow of The Royal Academy of Engineering. The Academy is the champion for the engineering profession and its role in tackling the most important societal and economic challenges. Support and mentorship from the Academy have been crucial in inspiring and enabling my research and I look forward to contributing to the Academy’s mission, especially in engineering for improving public health."