Alum Works on Robotic Space Surgery

Mount Michael Benedictine 2007 graduate Tom Frederick is currently working with a team of graduate students on a project to perfect robotic space surgery for long term space travel.

Tom is currently a doctoral student an UNMC's Center for Drug Delivery and Nanomedicine.

Nebraskans work on robot to do surgery in outer space

By Kate Howard Perry / World-Herald staff writer

Tom Frederick '07

Imagine a day when an explorer on Mars suffers a medical emergency, and the nearest surgeon is 35 million miles away.

Returning to Earth for treatment would take months, so preparations are being made to fix medical problems in space — and University of Nebraska researchers are working on the first step to a possible solution.

Three University of Nebraska-Lincoln students and a University of Nebraska Medical Center fellow went up on a roller coaster-like test flight with NASA last month. The flight gave the team up to 30 seconds at a time in low and zero gravity to see how miniature robots, designed to perform minimally invasive surgery, responded to the conditions. 

Read the entire Article from the Omaha World Hearld

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