Catherine Mohr facts for kids

Catherine Jane Mohr was born in New Zealand in 1968. She is a scientist who lives in the United States. Catherine specializes in creating special robots for surgery. These robots, called telemanipulator robotics, help make operations less invasive. This means patients can get better faster after surgery.

Catherine also designed fuel cells for cars and high-flying planes. She studied how to build eco-friendly buildings, known as sustainable architecture. Today, she teaches at Stanford Medical School. She is also the President of the Intuitive Foundation, which is part of Intuitive Surgical.

About Catherine's Family

Catherine Jane Anderson was born in Dunedin, New Zealand. Her mother was a biostatistician, who studies health data. Her father was a biochemist, who studies the chemistry of living things. When Catherine was very young, her family moved to the United States. Her father wanted to do more research there.

Her parents planned to move back to New Zealand. However, they could not find jobs in the same place. So, Catherine grew up in the U.S. She still kept her New Zealand citizenship.

Catherine met her husband, Paul Mohr, in 2000. She had broken her pelvis in a horseback riding accident. She had to stay still for six weeks. Her friends visited her often, and that is how she and Paul started their relationship. They have a daughter named Natalie.

Catherine's Education

Catherine loved to tinker and race bicycles when she was young. She worked as a bicycle mechanic in high school near Boston. When she started college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), she planned to study chemistry.

During her second year, she and a friend started a solar car racing team. Catherine realized she loved building things. She changed her major to mechanical engineering. She stayed on the solar car team until her last year of college. She helped race cars in the U.S. and worked on a car for a race in Switzerland. In 1987, she raced in Australia's first World Solar Challenge. Her work on solar car wheels won an award at MIT. Megan Smith, who later became the Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. under Barack Obama, was also on her team.

After getting her first degree in mechanical engineering, Catherine continued her studies at MIT. She earned her master's degree in 1992. Her master's paper was about designing a small robot hand. She had planned to get a Ph.D., but she decided to leave school to work on electric cars.

In 1999, Catherine started taking classes at UCLA to prepare for medical school. She then went to Stanford University School of Medicine. She became a Doctor of Medicine (MD) in 2006. However, she chose not to become a practicing doctor.

Catherine's Career

Catherine has been very busy since her days as a bike mechanic.

At MIT, she helped teach and did research. She worked on a bicycle light powered by a crank. She also helped with knee braces and taught design classes. She worked for other companies, too, doing engineering and consulting.

After MIT, Catherine worked on electric cars in California. She joined AeroVironment, where she worked with Paul MacCready. She helped develop fuel cells and special batteries for cars and high-flying aircraft. She even started a lab to create fuel cell systems for planes that could stay in the air for months.

After five years, Catherine thought about her career path. She once said that engineering is about "improving the human condition." In the mid-1990s, hybrid or electric cars were not being sold to people. This made her think about what she wanted to do next. She watched doctors test new medical devices during surgeries. When the technology did not work well, she realized that engineers needed to understand the human body better. This led her to decide to go to medical school.

Catherine noticed that during her time in medical school, using robots in surgery became a big idea. She studied tools for less invasive surgery and helped with laparoscopic surgeries. She helped create a special surgery called a Roux-en-Y gastric bypass using laparoscopic tools. This became part of the da Vinci Surgical System. She would later work for the company that made this system, Intuitive Surgical.

While in medical school, Catherine also started a company called Veresure. She invented a tool called the LapCap. This tool made laparoscopic surgery safer. During this type of surgery, doctors need to lift the abdominal wall. The LapCap uses a vacuum to do this, creating a safe space for surgery. She sold this invention in 2006.

Since 2006, Catherine has been a professor at Stanford Medical School. She studies how to use simulations to train surgeons. She has also taught at Singularity University since 2009.

In 2001, her husband was already working for Intuitive Surgical, the company that makes the da Vinci robot. Catherine was interested in how robots could make surgery easier on the body. She suggested her mentors at medical school try the da Vinci robot. She started advising Intuitive Surgical and later joined them full-time.

She became the Director of Medical Research, then Senior Director and Vice President of that department. She worked on ways to reduce pressure on the body during surgery. She also explored new surgical technologies, like ways to destroy tumors and special infrared vision. She then worked as Vice President of Strategy for about three years. In 2018, she created the Intuitive Foundation.

Catherine also advises new companies in the U.K., the U.S., and New Zealand. She is a member of Sigma Xi and the Institute for the Advancement of Engineering.

Patents and Inventions

Catherine Mohr is listed as the inventor on about forty patents for medical devices. This means she has created many new tools and technologies used in medicine.

Awards and Honors

Catherine has received many awards for her work:

• She was named one of the "Nifty Fifty" science mentors by the USA Science and Engineering Festival (2012).
• She was the first woman to be inducted into the New Zealand Hi-Tech Hall of Fame as a "Flying Kiwi" (2014).
• She was recognized as a World Class New Zealander (2014).
• She received the Hood Fellowship from The Lion Foundation (2014).
• She won the NEXT Woman of the Year in the Health and Sciences Category (2015).
• She was named a Silicon Valley Business Journal Woman of Influence (2020). This was for her work helping get personal protective equipment for medical workers during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hobbies and Other Interests

Catherine loved motorcycles even before she drove cars. She enjoys scuba diving, traveling, and cooking. While in medical school, she invented a machine to stamp chocolate coins, but it was not sold. In 2011, Catherine started playing the cello. She said that "one should always be a beginner at something."

Besides her main career, she became very interested in green architecture. She learned a lot about designing buildings that are good for the environment.

She has given TED Talks about robotic surgery and green architecture. She also shared a story about a diving accident involving a sea urchin that happened just before her horseback riding accident.