Director of Medical Research, Intuitive Surgical
Dr. Mohr is the Director of Medical Research for Intuitive Surgical, maker of the da Vinci robotic surgical system, where she investigates trends in surgical therapies and techniques and explores new technologies for incorporation into novel therapeutic devices.
During her initial training as a mechanical engineer at MIT’s AI Laboratory, Catherine developed compliant robotic hands designed to work in unstructured and dynamic environments. She was also a founding member of the MIT solar car team, building and racing solar powered cars in Switzerland, the US and Australia, and was an early member of the Premise software team, a CAD start-up out of MIT.
Catherine went on to work for many years with Dr. Paul MacCready at AeroVironment, developing alternative energy technologies including hybrid electric off-road reconnaissance vehicles and closed-cycle regenerative fuel cell systems for high-altitude aircraft.
Later, while pursuing an MD degree at Stanford, she identified needs for new laparoscopic surgical instruments as an Ethicon Endosurgery research fellow, collaborated to develop the first totally robotic roux-en-Y gastric bypass using the da Vinci Surgical System, and invented and then started a company to commercialize the “LapCap” device for safely establishing pneumoperitoneum.
In addition to her current role at Intuitive, Dr. Mohr is a Consulting Assistant Professor in General Surgery at Stanford School of Medicine, and Senior Scientific Advisor and Board Member of the Blue World Alliance, an innovative funding and study group which brings an enterprise driven marketplace approach to solving environmental problems facing the world’s oceans.
