Mehran Anvari

Dr. Mehran Anvari is the founding Director of the Centre for Minimal Access Surgery (CMAS) affiliated with McMaster University and based at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton. CMAS is the first Canadian centre of its kind, dedicated to the promotion of minimal access techniques in all surgical specialties.

His body of work has been internationally recognized and acknowledged. Time Magazine has touted the Centre for Minimal Access Surgery (CMAS) as “sculpting the next frontier of medicine.”

Dr. Anvari is the Scientific Director and CEO of the Centre for Surgical Invention and Innovation (CSii). In 2009, CSii won an award as part of the Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research competition to commercialize a new class of surgical robots based on Canadian space robotic expertise.

The NASA-International Space Station (ISS) Research and Development Award for Biology and Medicine was presented to Dr. Anvari for the development of IGAR – July 2015 – Boston. Under Dr. Anvari’s direction CSii and MDA leveraged Canadian space technology to create a new line of Image-Guided Automated Robotics (IGAR), which will be used, in the early detection and treatment of diseases.

In 2016, CSii partnered with MDA to create Insight Medbotics Canada Corporation (IMCC) – a start up to commercialize a new generation of intelligent robotic systems.

Dr. Anvari was also the recipient of McMaster’s Innovator of the Year award in 2009 as well as receiving the ORION Leadership Award in 2010. In 2016, Dr. Anvari was appointed to the Order of Ontario for his support in the development of medical robotics for early detection and treatment of cancers. He is a Professor of McMaster University’s Department of Surgery. In May 2004, he was appointed to the newly created Chair in Minimally Invasive Surgery and Surgical Innovation, and in June 2005, he became the Founding Director of the McMaster Institute for Surgical Invention, Innovation and Education.

Dr. Anvari completed his medical training in Britain at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and his surgical residency training in Canada at McMaster University. He then spent three years in Adelaide, Australia obtaining his PhD degree before returning to Hamilton to establish his academic and clinical practice.

He was one of the first surgeons in Canada to use robotics in surgery, and in 2003 Dr. Anvari established the world’s first telerobotic surgical service linking St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton and a community hospital (North Bay General). He is Past President of MIRA, the association representing all robotic surgeons in the world.

He was the Chief Scientific Officer for the NEEMO 7 mission (October 2004), and NEEMO 9 mission (April 2006), joint projects of McMaster, the Canadian Space Agency and NASA that were testing the ability of new robotic and telesurgical technology to allow a non-physician to perform assisted surgery in a contained environment that simulates conditions in space.

The author of more than 130 publications, he is also very active in training surgeons, having directly mentored over 50 surgeons. Dr. Anvari has been awarded the Government of Ontario Diamond Award for Innovation in Technology and the Government of Canada Gold Medal of Distinction for Telerobotic Surgery.