The 2024 ACS Surgeons and Engineers: A Dialogue on Surgical Simulation meeting will be held in person on March 13, 2024, at the ACS Headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. The Surgeons and Engineers Committee, serving as the Program Committee, is designing the meeting to promote collaboration between surgeons, surgical educators, academic engineers, and the simulation industry to build better surgical simulators.
The 2024 meeting will host the first do-it-yourself (DIY) simulator/model competition. The aim of the competition is to promote the development of DIY simulators and models and encourage the use of the simulators and models to improve simulation-based surgical education and training. The competition is open to all (excluding surgical companies). Accepted entrants will be invited to bring their simulator/model to the meeting, where they will give a short presentation and provide an interactive hands-on demonstration. An expert panel consisting of surgeons and engineers will evaluate entrants, and a winner will be recognized and awarded with free registration to the 2025 ACS Surgeons and Engineers meeting.
The keynote address, “Developing an Ecosystem of Innovation and Entrepreneurship to Advance the Future of Surgery and Academic Medicine,” will be delivered by Mark S. Cohen, MD, FSSO, FACS, from the Carle Illinois College of Medicine at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Cohen is dean of Carle Illinois College of Medicine and Senior Vice President at Carle Health, as well as a tenured professor of Surgery and Biomedical and Translational Sciences. He also serves as Founder Professor in The Grainger School of Engineering (Department of Bioengineering) and a professor at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Dr. Cohen’s research encompasses tissue engineering for functional organs, innovative anticancer drugs that target chaperone proteins, nanoparticle drug delivery for cancer and bone regeneration, and the application of mixed reality, artificial intelligence, and machine learning in telemedicine, clinical care, and healthcare workforce training.
For additional information, visit the meeting’s webpage or contact Gyusung I. Lee, PhD, Co-Program Chair of the Surgeons and Engineers Meeting, at glee@facs.org.
