Topic: Towards Intelligent Surgery Assistant Robots

M. Cenk Cavusoglu is currently a Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), with secondary appointments in Biomedical Engineering, and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He received the B.S. degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, in 1995, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1997 and 2000, respectively. He was a Visiting Researcher at the INRIA Rhones-Alpes Research Center, Grenoble, France (1998); a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley (2000-2002); and, a Visiting Associate Professor at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey (2009-2010).

Dr. Cavusoglu's research spans the general areas of robotics and human-machine interfaces with special emphasis on medical robotics, and haptics. Specifically, for the past twenty years, he has been conducting research on all of the different aspects of medical robotic systems from control, mechanism, and system design, to human-machine interfaces, haptics, and algorithms. More information on Dr. Cavusoglu's research can be found at his homepage at http://engr.case.edu/cavusoglu_cenk/

Topic: Haptic Communication for physical Human-Robot Interaction (pHRI)

Prof. Basdogan is a member of faculty in College of Engineering at Koc University since 2002. Before joining to Koc University, he was a senior member of technical staff at Information and Computer Science Division of NASA-Jet Propulsion Laboratory of California Institute of Technology (Caltech) from 1999 to 2002. At JPL, he worked on 3D reconstruction of Martian models from stereo images captured by a rover and their haptic visualization on Earth.

He moved to JPL from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he was a research scientist and principal investigator at MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics and a member of the MIT Touch Lab from 1996 to 1999. At MIT, he was involved in the development of algorithms that enable a user to touch and feel virtual objects through a haptic device (force-reflecting robotic arm). He received his Ph.D. degree from Southern Methodist University in 1994 and worked on medical simulation and robotics for Musculographics Inc. at Northwestern University Research Park for two years before moving to MIT. Prof.Basdogan conducts research and development in the areas of human-machine interfaces, control systems, mechatronics, human-robot interaction, biomechanics, computer graphics, and virtual reality technology. In particular, he is known for his work in the area of human and machine haptics (sense of touch) with applications to medical robotics and simulation, robotic path planning, micro/nano/optical tele-manipulation, human-robot interaction, molecular docking, information visualization, and human perception and cognition. He is currently the associate editor in chief (AEiC) of the IEEE Transactions on Haptics and also in the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Mechatronics, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Worlds (MIT Press), and Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds (Wiley) journals. In addition to serving in the program and organizational committees of several conferences, he also chaired the IEEE World Haptics Conference in 2011.

Topic: Standardization in Robotics Systems and its Constructive Effect on Research

Haldun Komsuoglu received his BS degree from Middle East Technical University Electrics and Electronics Department in 1997. He continued his education, focusing on robotic technologies, in University of Michigan Electrics and Computer Engineering. He received his MSc in 1998 and PhD in 2004 on System Control. After his graduate education, he worked as a researcher at University of Pennysylvania GRASP Lab until 2008. During his academic studies, he participated in many R&D projects sponsored by DARPA and NSF. In 2006 ,to commercialize the technologies developed during his academic study, he founded his first company, Sandbox Innovations, Inc. In 2009, he started as vice president at American Andriod. Again in 2009, he founded his design and consultancy company, Robolit LLC . He opened Robolit LLC Turkey office in 2012.