Dr. Farshid Alambeigi is the Director of Robotics, Imaging, and Autonomous Surgery at the Bookout Center at Houston Methodist Research Institute and an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Rice University. He leads interdisciplinary research at the intersection of robotics, artificial intelligence, medical imaging, and minimally invasive surgery to develop the next generation of intelligent robotic systems for diagnosis and intervention.
Before joining Rice University and Houston Methodist, Dr. Alambeigi was an Associate Professor and Leland Barclay Fellow in the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, where he was also a core faculty member of Texas Robotics. He held a joint appointment in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and served as a faculty member in the Department of Surgery at Dell Medical School, fostering close collaborations between engineering and clinical practice.
Dr. Alambeigi received his Ph.D. (2019) in Mechanical Engineering and his M.S. (2017) in Robotics from Johns Hopkins University. He was named a Siebel Scholar in recognition of his academic excellence and leadership. He is the recipient of the NIH NIBIB Trailblazer Award (2020) for pioneering flexible robotic systems and implants for minimally invasive spinal surgery, and the prestigious NIH Director's New Innovator Award (2022) to develop an in vivo robotic bioprinting platform for regenerative medicine. His work has also been recognized with the UT Austin Faculty Innovation Award, the Faculty Innovation Ambassador Award, the Outstanding Research Award by an Assistant Professor, the Walker Scholar Award, and numerous other honors. He serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), and IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine (RAM).
His research has received broad international recognition, earning the Best Paper Award in Medical Robotics at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2026), Best Paper Awards at SPIE Medical Imaging 2025 and the IEEE International Symposium on Medical Robotics (ISMR 2023), and Best Paper Finalist recognitions at IEEE RoboSoft 2026 and SPIE Medical Imaging in 2024 and 2026.
Dr. Alambeigi directs the Advanced Robotic Technologies for Surgery (ARTS) Laboratory, jointly spanning Rice University and Houston Methodist Research Institute. His research integrates robotics, artificial intelligence, computer vision, medical imaging, sensing, and advanced manufacturing to create dexterous continuum robots, soft robotic systems, and intelligent medical devices for endoluminal, endovascular, orthopedic, and general surgical applications. His group develops verification-driven autonomous surgical systems capable of perception, reasoning, planning, and safe execution in complex clinical environments. Through this work, he is advancing the vision of Surgineering- the seamless convergence of engineering, artificial intelligence, robotics, imaging, and clinical sciences to transform how surgical technologies are conceived, developed, validated, and translated into patient care.