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James Ferguson is a mechanical engineering graduate student in the Medical Engineering and Discovery (MED) Lab, said presenting at SPIE Medical Imaging this year was \u201ca fantastic experience for me from a professional development standpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n
As lead author, Ferguson presented the paper titled, \u201cToward image-guided partial nephrectomy with the da Vinci robot: exploring intraoperative re- registration approaches.\u201d<\/p>\n
The MED Lab is under the direction of Robert Webster, PhD, associate professor of mechanical engineering, which is part of the ¹ú²ú´«Ã½ Institute for Surgery and Engineering (VISE).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe overall atmosphere at SPIE is incredibly welcoming,\u201d Ferguson said.\u00a0 \u201cThis definitely made for a nice, low-pressure first conference presentation for me. Making my slide show and practicing my talk was nerve wracking, but once I stepped in front of the audience, these feelings seemed to melt away.\u201d<\/p>\n
He had the opportunity to speak with other researchers about some potential uses for the research project his team had not yet considered, which was immensely valuable. So were discussions with his conference roommate, another VISE member, who works with image processing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI learned a lot from the whole process in general, and in the future, writing and presenting won\u2019t seem so daunting,\u201d Ferguson said.<\/p>\n