Simon DiMaio leads User Interaction Engineering for the da Vinci 5 surgical system at Intuitive Surgical in Sunnyvale, California. He has held engineering and leadership roles in several stages of R&D from early-stage applied research through product development and launch.
Simon holds a Ph.D. in robotics and control systems from the University of British Columbia, Canada, where he explored haptics and teleoperation technologies, and then went on to develop some of the very first needle insertion models and novel robotic needle steering methods for medical applications.
Prior to moving to Intuitive Surgical, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship and later held an appointment as Instructor of Radiology at the Harvard Medical School, as a member of the Surgical Planning Laboratory (SPL) at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. At the SPL, he developed systems for MRI-compatible medical robots, as well as methods for navigated endoscopy and interventional guidance.
In addition to R&D projects at Intuitive, Simon has been involved in the development of academic relationships and programs, and spearheaded early work to develop the da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK) that can now be found in university research labs worldwide. He enjoys being part of developing innovative technologies and products that make positive impacts on the lives of patients and their medical teams.