Benoît Herman

Born in 1981 in this small and strange country called Belgium, I entered the Université catholique de Louvain in 1999. In 2004, I obtained the Mechanical Engineer degree. My master's thesis was devoted to the development of devices and methods for the positioning and fixation of bone fragments during maxillofacial surgery, within the HEROL project granted by Région Wallonne.

Medical devices and robots looked like fun stuff to work on, so I started a Ph.D. thesis at the Center for Research in Mechatronics (CEREM) and the Laboratoire d'Informatique, de Robotique et de Microélectronique de Montpellier (LIRMM , Université Montpellier 2-CNRS, France). This work was about the study, realization and validation of an active scope-holder for laparoscopic surgery - the EVOLAP robot . It was conducted in partnership with the Department of Gynecology of the Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc (Brussels, Belgium) and the IRCAD (Strasbourg, France), under a FIRST Europe objectif 3 grant from the Région Wallonne and the European Social Fund.

In March 2010, few months after adding "Ph.D." to my email signature, I joined the Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique (ISIR , Université Pierre et Marie Curie Paris 6-CNRS, France). I worked as post-doctoral fellow for 12 months within the AGATHE team (Assistance aux Gestes et Applications THErapeutiques), aiming at developing ergonomic and reliable surgeon-robot interfaces. I worked on several projects in medical robotics and mechatronics, including ID2U and SIME - hand-held robotic instrument with intra-abdominal mobilities and ergonomic handle for laparoscopic surgery, and PERSEE - robotic assisted confocal endomicroscopy ("optical biopsy") for minimally invasive exploration of the abdominal cavity and cancer detection.

In October 2010, I became F.R.S.-FNRS Postdoctoral Researcher (Chargé de recherches) at CEREM. My research project focused on the design of mechatronic and robotic devices for assistance to surgery, with a special attention paid to the interactions - physical or not - between human beings (surgeons, nurses, patients) and those devices.

In April 2014, I was appointed as coordinator of Louvain Bionics at UCL. At the end of my FNRS position in September 2014, I remained researcher with CEREM, and became invited assistant professor at École Polytechnique de Louvain (until September 2017).

Since November 2017, I am appointed as Research Logistic Collaborator (Logisticien de recherche) with the Institute of Mechanics, Materials and Civil Engineering (iMMC) and manager of the CREDEM platform. I am also a regular member of Louvain Bionics.