Jaydev Desai to Receive the 2024 IEEE RAS George Saridis Leadership Award

Jaydev Desai has been named a recipient of the 2024 IEEE RAS George Saridis Leadership Award in Robotics and Automation from the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS). Dr. Desai will receive this accolade at the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA2024) to be held in Yokohama Japan.

Named in honor of Professor George Saridis, the award recognizes outstanding contributions of an individual for their exceptional leadership, and dedication that benefit the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. Desai was nominated by Torsten Kroeger, Chief Science Officer at Intrinsic, who stated, “Jaydev has made pioneering contributions in Medical Robotics and Swarm Robotics in addition to significant leadership and service activities within the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS)."

Jaydev P. Desai is currently a Professor at Georgia Tech in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering and holds the G.P. “Bud” Peterson and Valerie H. Peterson Faculty Professorship in Pediatric Research. He is the Associate Chair for Undergraduate studies in BME at GT, founding Director of the Georgia Center for Medical Robotics (GCMR), and an Associate Director of the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM). He completed his undergraduate studies from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India, in 1993. He received his MA in Mathematics in 1997 and MSE and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics in 1995 and 1998 respectively, all from the University of Pennsylvania. He was also a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University.

He is a recipient of several NIH R01 grants, NSF CAREER award, and was the lead inventor on the “Outstanding Invention in the Physical Science Category” at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he was formerly employed. He is also the recipient of the Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award and the 2021 IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) Distinguished Service Award. He has been an invited speaker at the National Academy of Sciences “Distinctive Voices” seminar series and also invited to attend the National Academy of Engineering’s U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium. He has over 200 publications, is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Medical Robotics Research, and Editor-in-Chief of the four-volume Encyclopedia of Medical Robotics. At 2018 ICRA, his prior work was the finalist for “IEEE RAS Award for the Most Influential Paper from ICRA 1998” (20-years impact). His research group has received several accolades including the best student paper award, best symposium paper award, cover image of IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, and featured article in the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering. His current research interests are primarily in the areas of image-guided surgical robotics, pediatric robotics, endovascular robotics, and rehabilitation and assistive robotics. He is a Fellow of IEEE, ASME, and AIMBE.

- Christa M. Ernst