Research Associate / Doctoral Candidate – AI-based Surgical Understanding (m/f/d)

14.08.2026,Academic staff

The Research Group MITI at TUM University Hospital is seeking a Research Associate / Doctoral Candidate (m/f/d) to support our research on AI-based understanding and representation of surgical procedures in the operating room.

Position overview

Our goal is to further develop our operating room into one of the most highly digitized and data-driven surgical environments in Europe. We are currently building a multimodal data infrastructure that captures data during real-world surgical procedures using multiple cameras, microphones, sensors, and other data sources. Based on this infrastructure, we develop machine learning methods and downstream applications designed to support surgeons and clinical teams in their everyday work. For this position, we are particularly interested in developing structured and real-time representations of ongoing surgical procedures, for example using scene graphs, geometric representations, and multimodal learning approaches. These representations should capture relevant entities, actions, spatial relationships, and temporal developments within the operating room and provide a foundation for intelligent surgical assistance systems.

Tasks and responsibilities

Participate in innovative research projects at the intersection of medicine, computer science, and artificial intelligence, working closely with experienced clinicians, engineers, and scientists.
Design and implement novel approaches for operating room and surgical procedure understanding, including scene graphs, graph-based models, and other structured representations.
Develop machine learning prototypes that integrate multiple data modalities, including 2D/3D vision, language, audio, and sensor data.
Contribute to the development and expansion of our multimodal operating room infrastructure, with a focus on supporting surgical AI applications and downstream tasks.