Riccardo Secoli
University of California, Irvine, Imperial College London, University of Padua
Papers
19
Total Citations
431
H-Index
11
About
Riccardo Secoli is a leading researcher at the intersection of robotics, neuroscience, and medicine, with key contributions in robot-assisted neurorehabilitation and precision neurosurgery. His early work transformed our understanding of patient engagement during stroke therapy, demonstrating how visual distraction and auditory feedback can modulate patient effort—a finding cited over 100 times that reshaped rehabilitation protocol design. Secoli pioneered biologically inspired steerable needles for minimally invasive brain surgery, developing both the hardware and the intelligent path planning algorithms—including inverse reinforcement learning—that enable safe, autonomous navigation through delicate neural tissue. His modular robotic platform for keyhole neurosurgery, validated in first in-vivo deployments, represents a major step toward reducing trauma in brain interventions. With over 400 cumulative citations across his portfolio, Secoli’s impact spans from foundational studies on cable-driven rehabilitation robots to cutting-edge work on infusion-based targeted drug delivery for glioblastoma. His research uniquely bridges the gap between understanding human motor learning and building the next generation of surgical robots that can adapt to complex, deformable environments in real time.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
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- 3Experimental characterisation of a biologically inspired 3D steering needle38 citations · 2013
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- 6Planar Robotic Systems for Upper-Limb Post-Stroke Rehabilitation29 citations · 2008
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