Episode 7 of the Neural Pathways podcast features Dr. Halleh Ghaderi, Senior System Software Engineer – Integration Lead at Verb Surgical. and follow the podcast to never miss a release.
Halleh Ghaderi finds it very rewarding to see the impact of her work and appreciates knowing that products she worked on are helping patients. is a joint venture between Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and Google aimed at developing surgical robotics. As a Senior System Software Engineer, Halleh works on integrating tools from J&J and systems developed at Verb Surgical—in other words, putting together hardware and software to build surgical tools. In her position as Integration Lead, she works with her team on coding and research milestones every month and shares their progress daily. “Our work is never monotonous, there’s always a new challenge,” she explains. “That’s what is really exciting about the job I have.”
Like many science students, Halleh began her post-secondary studies with her sights set on going to medical school. However, once she started her undergrad, she went to an orientation session for a new biomedical engineering program at the University of British Columbia—and loved it. Although it was a very small program, Halleh applied to transfer and was accepted. After completing the program, she decided to pursue graduate studies in biomedical engineering at McGill in order to gain more hands-on experience with clinical applications of biomedical engineering. Halleh was at The Neuro for her PhD, where she worked on creating a platform to integrate images from various types of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to better guide surgeons during deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease.
During her PhD, Halleh was involved with the at McGill. Through this program, she was able to obtain funding and pursue a six-month internship at , a medical device company, where she did work related to the applications of her graduate project. “That was an amazing experience for me, where I saw the difference between academic life and working in industry,” she explains. This position confirmed for her that this was the career path that she really wanted to pursue. After she finished her PhD, she was contacted by Medtronic, inquiring if she was interested in a position that they had available. As a result of this experience, she encourages trainees to pursue internships and get a look at what it’s like to work in industry. Halleh was at Medtronic for almost five years, before deciding that she wanted to expand her expertise by experiencing new challenges and developing different skillsets. She had noticed a shift in the health industry towards robotics, and decided to follow that trend, which led her to her current position at Verb Surgical. “You need to always watch out for how the industry is doing that shift,” she advises.
Learn more about Halleh Ghaderi and Verb Surgical:
