Jessica Burgner-Kahrs

Jessica Burgner-Kahrs is a computer scientist and roboticist at the University of Toronto who builds continuum robots, slender tentacle-like machines, along with the modeling, state estimation, planning and control methods that guide them. Born in Wuppertal in 1981, she earned a doctorate at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in 2010 with work on robotic bone cutting and then worked as a research associate at Vanderbilt University. At Leibniz University Hannover, she led the Emmy Noether group CROSS from 2013, won the 2015 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize and coauthored a 2015 survey of medical continuum robots with D. Caleb Rucker and Howie Choset. She moved to Toronto in 2019 and directs the Continuum Robotics Laboratory she founded there; in June 2026, she was elected to the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Now at: University of Toronto and Carnegie Mellon University
Born: 1981

Years link to their sources.

Timeline

1981–2010

Robotic bone cutting at Karlsruhe

Born in Wuppertal in 1981, she studies computer science at the Universität Karlsruhe from 2000 to 2006 and earns her Diplom in 2006. She completes a Dr.-Ing. at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in 2010 with the dissertation Robot Assisted Laser Osteotomy, supervised by Heinz Wörn, and develops the world's first robotic system for automated bone cutting.
2010–2013

Vanderbilt and the CROSS group

From 2010 to 2012, she is a research associate in the mechanical engineering faculty at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where she works on a system designed to drain haemorrhages from the cranium of stroke patients. A German Academic Exchange Service fellowship brings her to Leibniz University Hannover in December 2012, and in May 2013 she enters the DFG's Emmy Noether Programme to lead the junior research group Continuum Robots for Surgical Systems (CROSS).
2015

A Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize

Her CROSS group at the Hannover Centre for Mechatronics builds continuum robots with tentacle-like arms made of tiny superelastic tubes that reach difficult spaces in surgery with minimal invasion. She receives the 2015 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize of 20,000 euros from the German Research Foundation and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, along with the 2015 Lower Saxony Science Award for young researchers and the title of Germany's Young Researcher of the Year. In November 2015, the group becomes her chair of continuum robotics.
December 2015

A survey of medical continuum robots

With D. Caleb Rucker and Howie Choset, she publishes "Continuum Robots for Medical Applications: A Survey" in IEEE Transactions on Robotics in December 2015. The paper reviews design, modeling, control and sensing for continuum manipulators and how they are used to build robotic systems for specific surgical procedures.
2016–2019

Associate professor in Hannover

In 2016, she receives the Engineering Science Prize of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and is elected to the Junge Akademie. She stays at Leibniz University Hannover until 2019 as an associate professor, and there she establishes the German term "Kontinuumsroboter".
2019–2021

A continuum robotics lab in Toronto

She joins the University of Toronto in 2019 with appointments in Mathematical and Computational Sciences, Computer Science, and Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, and founds the Continuum Robotics Laboratory on the Mississauga campus. The World Economic Forum names her a Young Global Leader in 2019. By 2021, her lab builds slender robots a few millimetres in diameter for surgery and industry, including sensor-equipped designs that partially steer themselves.
June 2026

Berlin-Brandenburg Academy membership

In June 2026, she is elected to the Engineering Sciences Class of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. At ICRA 2026 in Vienna, her lab's paper "State Estimation for Continuum Multirobot Systems on SE(3)" receives a King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Paper Award Honorable Mention from IEEE Transactions on Robotics.
As of October 2026

Professor at the University of Toronto

She is a professor in the University of Toronto's departments of Mathematical and Computational Sciences, Computer Science, and Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, founding director of the Continuum Robotics Laboratory and associate director of the Robotics Institute. Her research covers the design, modeling, state estimation, planning and control of deformable and continuum robots, combining physical embodiment with computational intelligence. In July 2025, she gives a talk on physical and computational intelligence in continuum robotics at Queen's University's Ingenuity Labs.