Achievement

IGERT faculty member Jake Abbott has been working with IGERT Trainees on medical microrobotics. Research with IGERT student Thomas Fountain provides strong evidence that helical medical microrobots, which swim and crawl reminiscent of tiny woodscrews and corkscrews, can be wirelessly controlled using the nonuniform magnetic field of a single rotating permanent magnet. This method of control is more likely to translate to clinical use that previously demonstrated uniform-field methods that have been explored in laboratory settings. Jake Abbott's successful exploratory work in magnetic steering of cochlear implants has laid the groundwork for a new IGERT Ph.D.-level project with IGERT student Lisandro Leon. Both projects demonstrate how small medical robots can provide even less-invasive surgical options than current approaches.