Tim Kowalewski

Tim Kowalewski is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on integrating robotics, biomedical engineering, and surgical training technologies.

• Academic Affiliation: University of Minnesota
• Primary Appointment: Mechanical Engineering

Research Interests: Dr. Kowalewski leads research in four major areas:

• Smart Surgical Tools: Development of instrumented tools for quantitative surgical techniques.
• Surgical Robotics: Creation of custom robots for procedural automation and sensor stream analysis.
• Surgical Simulation: Collaboration with CREST to advance VR and tissue-based surgical training.
• Surgical Genome Project: Partnership with University of Washington to build an open database of surgical procedures.

Publication Trends: His recent work emphasizes soft robotics fabrication, surgical skill quantification, and medical simulation innovations. Key themes include dynamic manufacturing, tissue mechanics, and crowd-sourced evaluation systems.

Scientific Awards:

• NSF CAREER Award (2019)
• NSF EFRI C3 SoRo Grant (2018)