Thank you to all who attended the annual Surgeons and Engineers: A Dialogue on Surgical Simulation meeting held on March 10-11, 2026. This 2-day in-person meeting had notable success. The meeting attracted 150 attendees from the US and seven other countries. There were 15 highly-scored abstracts selected and presented as oral presentations, and 37 abstracts were presented as poster presentations.
The keynote address, “25 Years of Simulations and Surgical Learners: An Educator’s Odyssey,” was delivered by Neal E. Seymour, MD, FACS, surgery residency program director for UMass Chan Medical School-Baystate and vice chair for education in the department of surgery at Baystate Health. Dr. Seymour’s presentation framed the meeting by reflecting on the evolution of simulation in surgical education and highlighted how artificial intelligence will likely drive the next evolution of surgical training.
The panel session, “Optimizing Surgical Performance Through Mental Skills,” brought together Dimitrios Stefanidis, MD, PhD, FACS, FASMBS, FSSH, Indiana University School of Medicine, and Carter Lebares, MD, FACS, University of California, San Francisco. The session highlighted mental skills as an important dimension of surgical performance and emphasized the value of structured training in human performance in surgical education. The panel session, “Virtual Reality in Medical Education and Training: From Classroom to Clinic,” featured Rand Kittani, BS; Claudius Conrad, MD, PhD; Blair Rowitz, MD, FACS; and Joe Bradley, BSE, MS, MBA, PhD, all from Carle Illinois College of Medicine. The discussion underscored how immersive technologies can support education, planning, and skills development across the continuum from classroom instruction to clinical application.
The debate, “Is Sustainability an Option in Surgical Simulation?” featured Leonie Heskin, MB BCh BAO, BArch, MArch, MSc(Bioeng), FRCSI, PhD, University College Cork; Deborah Rooney, PhD, University of Michigan; and S. Swaroop Vedula, MBBS, MPH, PhD, Johns Hopkins University. The session generated lively discussion, framing sustainability from both programmatic and environmental perspectives.
Optional workshops added a more hands-on dimension to the 2026 program. “Transforming Surgical Performance and Education Using Mixed-Reality Technology: How to Get Started in Cross-Disciplinary Teams,” was led by Inki Kim, PhD; Avinash Gupta, PhD; and Duo Wang, PhD, all from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “SSERI-AI: Experiential Learning Tutorial on AI for Surgical Simulation and Education Research,” was led by S. Swaroop Vedula, MBBS, MPH, PhD, and Emily Guan, MSE, from Johns Hopkins University.
The third Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Simulator/Model Competition received 28 entries. The competition highlighted the innovative spirit of the surgical simulation community and garnered much interest from attendees. The first-place awardee was Ibrahim Gooma, MD, from Mayo Clinic, for “Thyroid Biopsy Ultrasound Training Model.” The People’s Choice award, as voted on by meeting attendees, was awarded to Rozlan Basha, BS, from the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine for the “VCOM Virginia Laparoscopic Box Trainer.”
