The Pransky interview: Professor Moshe Shoham, Founder of Mazor Robotics and Microbot Medical

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to present a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of the Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned entrepreneur regarding the evolution, commercialization and challenges of bringing a technological invention to market. Design/methodology/approach – The interviewee is Professor Moshe Shoham, Director of the Robotics Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. Professor Shoham is also the Founder of Mazor Robotics Ltd. and the co-founder of Microbot Medical. As a pioneer of new and developing fields in medical robotics, Shoham describes his major advancements and innovative approaches. Findings – Professor Moshe Shoham has BSc in Aeronautical Engineering, MSc and DSc in Mechanical Engineering from Technion, where he has been teaching for the past nearly 30 years, and is currently the Tamara and Harry Handelsman Academic Chair in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. The Technion is renowned for the ingenuity of its graduates, who comprise 70 per cent of Israel’s founders and managers of high-tech industries, making Israel the greatest concentration of high-tech start-up companies anywhere outside of Silicon Valley, California, USA. Along with Technion’s expert faculty, students and facilities, Professor Shoham founded Mazor Robotics in 2001 and co-founded Microbot Medical Ltd. in 2010. Originality/value – Professor Shoham, a worldwide acclaimed authority in the field of robotics whose life work is dedicated to developing technologies that improve patient care, is the inventor of the first commercially available mechanical guidance system for spine surgery, the Mazor Robotics Renaissance™ Guidance System. He is also the visionary and creator of the unprecedented Microbot ViRob, an Autonomous Advancing Micro Robot, <1 mm in diameter, which has the ability to crawl within cavities/lumens, allowing physicians to target a disease site with exquisite precision. His latest work includes a revolutionary swimming Micro Robot and the new Mazor Renaissance® Brain Surgery. Professor Shoham holds 30 patents and more than a dozen awards, including the recent prestigious 2013 Thomas A. Edison Patent Award and the election into the National Academy of Engineering.