Curriculum Vitae

After growing up on the French-German border, I started my medical studies in 2017 at Heidelberg University in Germany. During my studies, in 2020, I became involved in the research team of Martin Wagner as a student assistant for surgical data annotation. In 2021, I then started my medical doctoral thesis on the modelling and automatic recognition of surgical activities in laparoscopic surgery, supervised by Martin Wagner. During this time, I learned in-vivo porcine anaesthesia and surgery as a testbed for experiments on autonomous surgical robotics. I decided to pursue our endeavours when the research team moved to the TU Dresden. My research focus now lies in the implementation of autonomous actions in robotic surgery and the ensuing human-machine interaction in the operating room of the future. I am finishing my medical studies in 2024.

Projects/Cooperation within CeTI you are involved in:
Translational Surgical Oncology, HMI with Technical Design, CeTI Glove

What is your research interest?

My research focus lies in the implementation of surgical skills on robots and the ensuing human-machine interaction in the operating rooms of the future.

What motivated you to do what you do today?

I always loved mastering skills, learning about new technologies, as well as engineering my own solutions. I want to continue doing just that.

What do you find particularly interesting about CeTI?

I enjoy the coming together of engineers, computer scientists, designers and more to work on the complex use case of medicine.

To which question have you not found an answer lately?

I am still trying to figure out how robots could reliably understand and mimick the manipulation of soft tissues.

How do you spend your free time?

Hanging out in cafés, listening to or making music, traveling, watching YouTube videos, trying to program stuff. That is basically it.

Publications

1.

André Schulze; Johanna M. Brandenburg; Rayan Younis; Marius Distler; Stefanie Speidel; Jürgen Weitz; Martin Wagner

Ethische Herausforderungen durch KI in der Chirurgie (Journal Article)

In: Zentralblatt für Chirurgie, vol. 150, no. 05, pp. 389–392, 2025.

(Links | BibTeX)

2.

Balázs Gyenes; Nikolai Franke; Paul M. Scheikl; Pit Henrich; Rayan Younis; Gerhard Neumann; Wartin Wagner; Franziska Mathis-Ullrich

Point cloud segmentation for autonomous clip positioning in laparoscopic cholecystectomy on a phantom (Journal Article)

In: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 10, no. 8, pp. 8522–8529, 2025.

(Links | BibTeX)

3.

Alexander Schüßler; Christian Kunz; Rayan Younis; Benjamin Alt; Jamie Paik; Martin Wagner

Semi-autonomous robotic assistance for gallbladder retraction in surgery (Journal Article)

In: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 10, no. 7, pp. 7468–7475, 2025.

(Links | BibTeX)

4.

Rayan Younis; Ariel Rodriguez; Mats O. Ellenberg; Gregor Just; Katja Eckstein; Katja Krug; Yichen Fan; Tianfang Lin; Jens Wagner; Julien Fischer; Martin Lelis; Anna Barth; Ann Wierick; André Schulze; Sebastian Schröder; Jens Krzywinski; Frank Ellinger; Stefan Gumhold; Sebastian Bodenstedt; Marius Distler; Stefanie Speidel; Jürgen Weitz; Martin Wagner

Towards Tactile Internet in surgery: Multimodal sensor data acquisition for gesture recognition and immersive tele-mentoring (Proceedings Article)

In: Proceedings of the Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics (HSMR), 2025.

(Links | BibTeX)

5.

Mats O. Ellenberg; Katja Krug; Yichen Fan; Jens Krzywinski; Raimund Dachselt; Rayan Younis; Martin Wagner; Jürgen Weitz; Ariel Rodriguez; Gregor Just; Sebastian Bodenstedt; Stefanie Speidel

Endomersion: An immersive remote guidance and feedback system for robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery (Proceedings Article)

In: Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR), Abstracts and Workshops (VRW), 2025.

(Links | BibTeX)

6.

Martin Wagner; Marie T. J. Daum; André Schulze; Johanna M. Brandenburg; Rayan Younis; Anna Kisilenko; Franziska Mathis-Ullrich Balázs Gyenes; Sebastian Bodenstedt; Stefanie Speidel; Beat P. Müller-Stich

Machine learning assisting robots (Book Section)

In: Karcz, Konrad; Nawrat, Zbigniew; Gumbs, Andrew A. (Ed.): Artificial Intelligence and the Perspective of Autonomous Surgery, pp. 203–221, Springer, 2024.

(Links | BibTeX)

7.

Rayan Younis; Amine Yamlahi; Sebastian Bodenstedt; Paul M. Scheikl; Anna Kisilenko; Marie T. J. Daum; André Schulze; Phillip A. Wise; Felix Nickel; Franziska Mathis-Ullrich; Lena Maier-Hein; Beat P. Müller-Stich; Stefanie Speidel; Marius Distler; Jürgen Weitz; Martin Wagner

A surgical activity model of laparoscopic cholecystectomy for co-operation with collaborative robots (Journal Article)

In: Surgical Endoscopy, vol. 38, pp. 4316–4328, 2024.

(Links | BibTeX)

8.

Paul M. Scheikl; Balázs Gyenes; Rayan Younis; Christoph Haas; Gerhard Neumann; Martin Wagner; Franziska Mathis-Ullrich

LapGym – An open source framework for reinforcement learning in robot-assisted laparoscopic surgery (Journal Article)

In: Journal of Machine Learning Research, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 17665–17706, 2024.

(Links | BibTeX)

9.

Johanna M. Brandenburg; Alexander C. Jenke; Antonia Stern; Marie T. J. Daum; André Schulze; Rayan Younis; Philipp Petrynowski; Tornike Davitashvili; Vincent Vanat; Nithya Bhasker; Sophia Schneider; Lars Mündermann; Annika Reinke; Fiona R. Kolbinger; Vanessa Jörns; Fleur Fritz-Kebede; Martin Dugas; Lena Maier-Hein; Rosa Klotz; Marius Distler; Jürgen Weitz; Beat P. Müller-Stich; Stefanie Speidel; Sebastian Bodenstedt; Martin Wagner

Active learning for extracting surgomic features in robot-assisted minimally invasive esophagectomy: A prospective annotation study (Journal Article)

In: Surgical Endoscopy, vol. 37, pp. 8577–8593, 2023.

(Links | BibTeX)

10.

Martin Wagner; Sebastian Bodenstedt; Marie T. J. Daum; André Schulze; Rayan Younis; Johanna M. Brandenburg; Fiona R. Kolbinger; Marius Distler; Lena Maier-Hein; Jürgen Weitz; Beat P. Müller-Stich; Stefanie Speidel

The importance of machine learning in autonomous actions for surgical decision making (Journal Article)

In: Artificial Intelligence Surgery, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 64–79, 2022.

(Links | BibTeX)