Emmanuel Vander Poorten (Member, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree from Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, in 2007. He is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, where he is also the Coordinator of the Robot-Assisted Surgery Group, the Founder of CRAS, the Joint Conference on New Technologies for Computer/Robot-Assisted Surgery, and a Steering Board Member of ACTUATOR, a biennial event bringing together leading experts, suppliers, and users of new actuators and low-power electromagnetic drives. He is active in international collaborative research projects, participating and coordinating several EU-funded projects on medical robotics. His research interests include medical device design, robotic comanipulation, haptics, teleoperation, control of flexible instruments, and robotic catheters.