PRISMA Lab is hiring
The PRISMA Team is seeking for motivated individuals with interest to the field of medical robotics to work within the ERC Synergy Grant Project EndoTheranostics https://www.endotheranostics.com/, a revolutionary approach to robotized colonoscopy!
PRISMA is hiring 3 full-time Post-Doc Research Assistants with a temporary employment contract at CREATE consortium. Details:
C.R.E.A.T.E. Consortium (CREATE) seeks 3 full-time Post-Doc Research Assistants (RAs) to work respectively on:
- RA1 — Design of Control Interfaces and Architecture
- RA2 — Optimal/Nonlinear Control with AI Techniques
- RA3 — Image Elaboration in AI for Robot Navigation
CREATE is a non-profit research organisation possessing a legal personality. According to the Italian law, it belongs to the class of Consorzi, where a number of subjects give life to an independent body intended to reach commonly agreed objectives. CREATE was founded in late 1992 with the aim of establishing a stable link between industry and university. The current partnership of the consortium includes Ansaldo Nucleare SpA, University of Basilicata, University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, University of Naples Federico II, University of Naples Parthenope, and University of Trieste.
Over the years, CREATE has gained vast experience from participation and coordination of more than twenty FP7 and H2020 European projects in the field or robotics and automation.
Since 20 years a collaboration is active between CREATE and PRISMA Lab (Projects of Industrial and Service Robotics Mechatronics and Automation) in DIETI (Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology) at University of Naples Federico II. The PRISMA team is committed since 35 years to pursuing research in robotics and automation, and is internationally recognized in the community for their achievements on industrial and service robotics.
The RAs will work with the Medical Robotics Team of the PRISMA group within the project “EndoTheranostics — Multi-sensor Eversion Robot Towards Intelligent Endoscopic Diagnosis and Therapy”. The EndoTheranostics project is one of 37 projects selected for funding from 395 proposals in the ERC Synergy Grant 2022 call, the only one to be funded on robotics.
Project description
EndoTheranostics is a multidisciplinary research project that will revolutionise the theranostics of colorectal cancer (CRC), impacting the quality of life of millions of individuals.
CRC represents a significant proportion of malignant diseases. Interventions are often carried out during the latter stages of development, leading to low patient survival rates and poor quality of life. In 2022 a European Commission report stated that “colonoscopy-based screening has higher sensitivity than testing for blood in stool, but it is less acceptable to participants”. At the same time, effective methods to treat polyps in the colon are limited. Current approaches are often associated with unsafe oncological margins and high complication rates, requiring life-changing surgery.
EndoTheranostics will usher in a new era for screening colonoscopy, advancing the frontiers of medical imaging and robotics. A tip-growing or eversion robot with a sleeve-like structure will be created to extend deep into hollow spaces while perceiving the environment through multimodal imaging and sensing. It will also act as a conduit to transfer miniaturised instruments to the remote site within the colon for diagnosis and therapy (theranostics). With these capabilities, the system will be able to offer:
- • painless colon cleansing in preparation for endoscopy
- • real-time polyp detection and tissue characterisation through AI-assisted multimodal imaging
- • effective removal of polyps by conveying a “miniature mobile operating chamber” equipped with microsurgical tools to the target through the lumen of the eversion robot
EndoTheranostics has the ambition to advance the state-of-the-art in robotics recalling basic research to address a problem so ambitious that it cannnot be dealt with by one team alone. A group of four Principal Investigators (PIs) will work together and bring different skills and resources to tackle ambitious research problems.
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