18-year-old Texas student trains da Vinci robot to remove tumours; succeeds in 3 of 4 tests

Meet Rayhan Papar, the 18-year-old Texas student (Image Credit: Society for Science/Chris Ayers Photography) Surgical robots are already used in operating rooms around the world, helping surgeons perform complex procedures with remarkable precision. But these machines are still controlled by human surgeons. Now, an 18-year-old student from Texas has explored what it could take to teach a surgical robot to carry out one of the most delicate tasks in medicine: identifying and removing a tumour on its own.According to the Society for Science, Rayhan Papar, an 18-year-old student from Spring, Texas, developed a framework to help surgical robots learn autonomous tumour removal. His project, titled Sim-to-Real for Autonomous Tumor Resection via Minimally Invasive Robotics, was tested on a da Vinci surgical system and successfully removed whole tumours in three of four gel-model tests. Papar was also named a finalist in the Regeneron Science Talent Search 2026.Teaching a robot to operateThe idea behind Papar's project was not to replace surgeons or create a robot ready to perform operations on patients. Instead, his work focused on one of the biggest challenges in surgical robotics: how t...