After a series of pitches from the eight selected finalists, the first winner of the RUBIC challenge, held in conjunction with ERUS26 was announced in the morning of the second day of the EAU’s robotic meeting.
The prize was given to Dr. Luca Morgantini (Chicago, US), representing a multinational team on three continents. Their ‘JANUS-AI’ fills a very real unmet need: helping the novice surgeon in the absence of their mentor by analysing the last 30 seconds of their procedure and within two seconds coming up with three similar surgical videos that show ways to proceed.
The winning team was awarded a prize of €5000 and offered the following opportunities: European fellowship experience in robotic urology centers, access to mentorship and advisory programmes and the opportunity to present at MedTech Malta 2026.
RUBIC, the ‘Robotic Urology Breakthrough Innovation Challenge’ was the brainchild of Prof. Fabrizio Dal Moro (Padua, IT) and innovator Mr. Anilkumar Dave (Venice, IT), who were both also part of the seven-person jury of tech experts.
Other contestants presented innovations like improved AI nerve mapping for better mapped, patient-specific nerve-sparing prostatectomies (Labyrinth), or an algorithm that gives real-time feedback on how much the nerves get damaged during a procedure, based on angle, velocity, and even types of gestures (Nerveguard).
- See the full list of competitors here. The on-demand session is now available in the ERUS26 Resource Centre.
Prof. Breda speaks to the RUBIC hopefuls ahead of the session.
Reflecting after the winner was announced, Prof. Dal Moro was extremely impressed by the number and quality of submissions:
“It was both a challenge for participants as well the organisers, I can tell you! As urologists we need innovative ideas, so we wanted to create a challenge for start-ups, of mixed teams with doctors, scientists and engineers working together. In the end we received 11 submissions, which we brought down to eight finalists who presented in Padua. The jury decided that the JANUS-AI had the most potential, a well-deserved winner.”
Dr. Morgantini was proud to accept the award on behalf of his team. “Our team contains experts from across three continents. I am a resident under Dr. Simone Crivellaro in Chicago, we have members at Molinette Policlinic Lab in Turin, and Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in Abu Dhabi. A big team is key to our success.”
The team has created an intelligent, AI-powered database of surgical videos to address an unmet need a mentor for surgeons when they need help.
“And I consider myself one of these surgeons,” said Dr. Morgantini. “If Dr. Crivellaro is not available, we can get stuck. It’s a humbling experience I can tell you, you’re in trouble in the surgery, surgeon comes in and everything’s back to normal in 30 seconds.”
Dr. Crivellaro: “Yes, this project is born from a real need, the need of the trainees, to have someone or in this case, more than one person there, when they need them. In the US trainees train closely but after residency school they are by themselves, that’s when they need someone.”
“At the moment the model has 37 hours of surgical videos from our institution, over 2500 micro clips. We can scale this up, the sky is really the limit.”
Dr. Morgantini: “The model itself doesn’t need to be trained on surgical videos but is able to recognise what you’re seeing and pull up videos from across the database in 1-2 seconds. We tested on laparoscopic and it works too. It works purely on visual cues.”
As winner of the RUBIC2026 prize and all that goes with it, Drs. Morgantini and Crivellaro hope to use the recognition to work with robotic companies, have their software integrated in training platforms, or even the robotic platform itself. “Those would be our ultimate goals. Thankfully we have lots of opportunities to meet robotic companies at ERUS26.”
- All signs point to the RUBIC programme returning in 2027.
