This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Farshid Alambeigi refers to one of his most ambitious research efforts as "the sci-fi project." The idea lives up to the name. He is developing robotic technology that could one day help manufacture living tissue—potentially even functioning organs—for transplantation.
"Imagine printing a functional liver," said Alambeigi, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Rice University. "Instead of transplanting a liver from one human to another, you print it on a 3D printer and then put it into the body." That future remains far beyond today's clinical possibilities, but tackling problems that seem almost impossibly difficult is precisely what draws Alambeigi to them. "I always tell my students, if others can do it, why are we doing it?" he said.
"I want to do something others are not doing, something more challenging. That's exciting." Alambeigi's research spans engineering, robotics, artificial intelligence, medical imaging, advanced manufacturing and surgery. In addition to his faculty appointment at Rice, he holds a joint role with Houston Methodist, where he serves as director of robotics, imaging and autonomous surgery at The Bookout Center at Houston Methodist Research Institute.
He is also a member of Rice's Ken Kennedy Institute and the Houston Methodist-Rice Digital Health Institute. The arrangement places him exactly where he wants to be: between the engineering lab and the operating room. His goal is not simply to build more sophisticated robots, but rather to create technologies surgeons will actually use—tools that address real clinical problems, improve patient care and have a realistic path from prototype to hospital.
He has even coined a word for that approach: "surgineering." "It's the engineering of surgery," Alambeigi said. For Alambeigi, a new surgical technology rarely starts with a machine. Instead, it starts with a conversation.
Before designing a robot or device, he talks with surgeons about their work and, whenever possible, observes procedures in the operating room. "You need to be able to speak their language and understand what they are doing," he said. From there, clinical challenges become engineering questions.
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