People

Faculty

Ph.D. Students

Collaborator

Undergraduate Students

Yash Chitalia

× Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Email: yash.chitalia@louisville.edu
https://yashchitalia.github.io

Yash is the Director of the HeaRT Lab. He works on the design, modeling, and control of miniature surgical robots. He comes to Louisville from a research fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and a Ph.D. from the RoboMed laboratory at Georgia Tech.

Behnam Moradkhani

× Ph.D. Student, Mechanical Engineering
Email: behnam.moradkhani@louisville.edu

Behnam is a Ph.D. Student at the University of Louisville. He got his B.Sc. in electrical engineering from the University of Tehran. His research interests are robotics, mechatronics, control, dynamic systems, and AI. In September 2022, he joined HeaRT Lab where he conducts research on surgical robotics.

Pejman Kheradmand

× Ph.D. Student, Mechanical Engineering
Email: pejman.kheradmand@louisville.edu
https://sites.google.com/view/pejmankheradmand/home

Pejman is a Ph.D. student at the University of Louisville, with a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in mechanical engineering. He conducted research on social robotics during his master's studies and later joined a surgical robot startup. His expertise lies in developing robotic surgical systems, focusing on software, GUI design, and mechatronic integration. Pejman joined the HeaRT Lab in January 2023, actively researching continuum surgical robotics.

Rawan Ahmed

× Ph.D. Student, Mechanical Engineering
Email: rawan.rawan@louisville.edu

Rawan Ahmed is graduating in the fall of 2024 with a degree in bioengineering from the University of Louisville. Her co-op experiences in hospitals, particularly in the operating room, have fueled her interest in the development and applications of robotic surgery.

Kent K. Yamamoto (co-advised)

× Ph.D. Student (co-advised), Mechanical Engineering (Duke University)
Email: kent.yamamoto@duke.edu

Kent is a Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. student at Duke University, advised by Dr. Patrick Codd, M.D. at the Brain Tool Lab and co-advised by Dr. Yash Chitalia at the HeaRT Lab. He graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering, where he was involved in surgical robotics research at the RoboMed Lab. As an NSF Traineeship in Advancing Surgical Technologies (TAST) Fellow, he conducts translational surgical robotics research for automated laser surgery for tumor resection. His research interests are in the modeling and control of continuum robotics and how to implement medical optics into continuum robotic systems.

Florian Heemeyer (co-advised)

× PhD Student, Mechanical Engineering (ETH Zurich)
Email: fheemeyer@ethz.ch

Florian completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). He gained initial research experience as a research assistant at the Institute of Biological and Medical Imaging at the Helmholtz Zentrum München and during his master’s thesis in the Medical Robotics and Automation Laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. He joined the Multi-Scale Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich in August 2021 to pursue a PhD in which he is co-advised by Prof. Yash Chtialia. Florian’s main research interests are medical robotics, machine learning, and medical imaging.

Ajmal Zemmar

× Assistant Professor, Neurological Surgery
Email:

Scott R. Silva

× Assistant Professor, Radiation Oncology
Email:

Keith Sowards

× Assistant Professor, Radiation Oncology
Email:

Patrick J. Codd

× Associate Professor, Neurosurgery
Email:

Harshith Jella

× Undergraduate Biology student on the MD/PhD Track
Email: harshith.jella@louisville.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/harshith-jella-95498b223/

Harshith is an undergraduate student at the University of Louisville on the pre-health pathway, interested about the intersection of robotics and healthcare. Originally hailing from Frisco, Texas, he graduated from Liberty High School and participated in First Tech Challenge robotics competition for a majority of my high school career. Some of my other research interests include immunology and cancer, recognizing the immense potential for robotics to aid in the development of innovative treatments. In his free time he enjoys travelling and trying new foods!

Joey Klein

× Undergraduate Mechanical Engineering Student
Email: joseph.klein.1@louisville.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-klein-281382263/

Joseph is an undergraduate mechanical engineering student at the University of Louisville, completing a minor in computer science. With a passion in medicine and biotechnology, he has gained hands-on experience in both cancer cell and biomechanical research at the UofL Health Campus. Interested in the use of robotics in the medical industry, Joseph joined the HeaRT lab in the Fall of 2024. Beyond academics, he is a member of Greek life and the UofL men's club soccer team.

Ben Beyerle

× Undergraduate Mechanical Engineering Student
Email: benjamin.beyerle@louisville.edu

Ben is an undergraduate mechanical engineering student at the University of Louisville, pursuing a minor in economics. He has gained hands-on experience at companies like Johnson & Johnson, GE Appliances, and Textron Systems, where his passion for medical technology, robotics, and automation grew. Outside of academics, Ben enjoys exercising, camping, and woodworking.