[vtkusers] [Fwd: job posting]

[Zack Galbreath]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	RE: job posting
Date: 	Wed, 8 Nov 2006 09:49:24 -0800
From: 	Chris Hasser <Chris.Hasser at intusurg.com>
To: 	Zack Galbreath <zack.galbreath at kitware.com>



2nd attempt

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Hasser 
Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2006 9:48 AM
To: 'Zack Galbreath'
Subject: job posting


Zack,

Can you please post the following?

Thanks,

Chris

**************************************************

Software Positions at Intuitive Surgical

Intuitive Surgical has a small Applied Research group dedicated to enabling significant technological advances in surgical robotics through in-house research as well as collaborative relationships with academia and industrial partners.  The da Vinci offers an outstanding platform for the addition of image-guided surgery, and the work here is very exciting.  I expect to hire for several positions over the next few months.  In addition to resumes intended for the open position described below, I would be happy to receive any resumes from the VTK community that we might be able to match to future open positions.  Please apply online, but you may also e-mail me directly.  To apply online, visit www.intusurg.com, then click Company, Careers, Career Opportunities, Engineering, Senior R&D Engineer-Vision Software.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Christopher J. Hasser, Ph.D.
Director, Applied Research
Intuitive Surgical
950 Kifer Road
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
(408) 523-2416 (phone)
(408) 523-1390 (fax)
Chris.Hasser at intusurg.com
www.intusurg.com


Senior R&D Engineer-Vision Software
Tracking Code
2006-126 
Job Description
Are you prepared to develop innovative, practical solutions to challenging computer vision problems for a million-dollar surgical robot? Intuitive Surgical has a rapidly growing installed base of over 400 da Vinci surgical systems, benefiting tens of thousands of patients per year. da Vinci is equipped with a stereo endoscope and 3D display, and represents an outstanding platform for the development and application of computer vision algorithms and image-guided surgery. This position offers a candidate with solid theoretical and exceptional software development skills an opportunity to bridge the gap between academia and industry. A successful candidate will be equally comfortable developing new algorithms, identifying promising state-of-the art algorithms from academia and producing high-quality implementations that lend themselves to re-use, testing, and productization through collaborations with Intuitive's product development engineers. He or she must excel in a high-energy team, must have excellent communication skills and must be able to balance independent production results with the need to collaborate during planning, system integration, and testing of larger projects.

Specific near term deliverables will include:

In the first 6 weeks: understand Intuitive Surgical's current system architecture for tracking surgical tools that robustly fuses information from robot kinematics and image analysis.

In the first 3 months: contribute to a small Kernel development project in the product pipeline with the new product development team.

In the first 6 months,

Pick, implement and test building blocks (for example, image matching, sequential fusion) for the tool tracking system. 
Integrate system building blocks on dedicated Intuitive Surgical PC prototyping hardware (Gray Box) with our Surgical System to demonstrate on bench test environment and in vivo labs. 
Along with management, develop a project plan for development of a next generation tool tracking system that is robust for transferring to productization. Include infrastructure development considerations (software and calibration tools, display environment, test environment) as well algorithm development.
Publish internally and communicate technical results, implementation requirements and implications, limitations, productization requirements, and clinical utility.

In the first 12 months: produce a complete technical prototype integrated with Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci system and demonstrate performance on a benchtest environment and in Labs. Measure results and compare against projected robustness and accuracy criteria. Iterate and work with cross functional groups and overcome technical obstacles and achieve required performance.

Required Skills
Masters or Doctorate in EE, MS, CS, or similarly, or commensurate experience. 
Additional 4 years' experience in industry, with code in released product 
Comfortable with all phases of the product development lifecycle including design, implementation, debug, verification, validations, and transfer 
Expertise with image processing and 3D vision, including feature extraction and matching, camera calibration 
Familiarity with teleoperations principles and robot mechanisms is a strong plus 
A strong interest in the medical applications of machine vision and robotics, 3D vision, including feature extraction and matching, camera calibration 
Familiarity with teleoperations principles and robotic mechanisms is a strong plus 
A strong interest in the medical applications of machine vision and robotics
Job Location
Sunnyvale, CA, US.
Position Type
Full-Time/Regular