S. Duke Herrell, MD ’90, Res ’96, professor of urologic surgery, mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt has recently received a second currently active prestigious NIH R01 research grant. He leads Vanderbilt’s University Medical Center’s robotic surgery programs and the grant is to develop a new robotics system to perform cancerous prostate removal surgery. Herrell is an active clinical surgeon and has an additional active NIH R01 to develop a virtual reality image-based guidance system for robotic kidney surgery. He is an internationally recognized expert in kidney cancer, prostate cancer, and surgical robotics. Herrell also co-founded Vanderbilt’s Institute for Surgery and Engineering and serves as chief medical officer of Virtuoso Surgical, which is developing new advanced medical devices to revolutionize endoscopic surgery. The company is based in Nashville, Tenn., and has received early-stage funding.