Research Interests

My research interests center on robotic-assisted surgery, spanning adaptive control of surgical robotic systems, the assessment of surgical skill, and the methodological challenges of conducting reliable large-scale skill evaluation.

Adaptive control of non-rigid robotic manipulators, with applications in robotic-assisted surgery
Influence of unconscious bias on objective skill assessment
Crowdsourcing methodologies for high-volume evaluation tasks, including best practices for data integrity and quality control

Ongoing Work

Since the fall of 2025 I have been contributing to ongoing research efforts with the Medical Robotics and Devices Lab. My primary role has been completing data analysis and first drafts of papers for publication. The current projects I am working on are:

Controlling a soft robotic end-effector to be used in medical applications. This work has already resulted in a publication and presentation, both listed below. I have put together a page with more information on the project which can be found here.
Measuring the in-vivo urethral catheter insertion force which has not been previously documented. I have been completing the analysis of data collected on 12 patients in November of 2020 with the hope that this force measurement can serve as a resource for both provider and patient catheter insertion training and insertion force monitoring during difficult catheter deployments.
Segmenting my Ph.D. dissertation, listed below, into peer-reviewed paper publications.

Publications

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Gotthelf, O., Farhat Ullah, Y., Narkhede, R., & Kowalewski, T. M. (2026). Estimating the non-parametric Jacobian of a tendon-driven soft robot end-effector. Proceedings of the 2026 Design of Medical Devices Conference.

Gotthelf, O., Townsend, D., & Durfee, W. (2021). A video game based hand grip system for measuring muscle force in children. Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, 18, 113. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12984-021-00908-1

Dissertations

Gotthelf, O. (2024). Quantifying the effect of perceived gender identity on competency-based performance evaluations of postoperative scar images [Doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota]. University Digital Conservancy. https://hdl.handle.net/11299/271662

Gotthelf, O. (2021). Quantifying the effect of perceived gender identity on competency-based performance evaluations of surgical media [Master's thesis, University of Minnesota]. University Digital Conservancy. https://hdl.handle.net/11299/226345

Presentations

Gotthelf, O., Farhat Ullah, Y., Narkhede, R., & Kowalewski, T. M. (2026, April). Estimating the non-parametric Jacobian of a tendon-driven soft robot end-effector [Poster presentation]. Design of Medical Devices Conference, Minneapolis, MN.

Gotthelf, O. (2020, September). Objective surgical skills assessment and unconscious bias: A preliminary study [Conference presentation]. 2020 Institute for Engineering in Medicine Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN.