Awards

At IPCAI 2026, we celebrate excellence across the spectrum of computer-assisted intervention research through a variety of prestigious awards. 

Scientific Contribution Awards

These awards are selected via a rigorous two-stage distributed review process, designed by Nassir Navab:

• Best Paper Award
  Recognizes outstanding and impactful research that significantly advances the field of computer-assisted interventions.
  Sponsored by Siemens Healthineers.

Winner:

Dominik Schneider, Lalithkumar Seenivasan, Sampath Rapuri, Vishalroshan Anil, Aiza Maksutova, Yiqing Shen, Jan Mangulabnan, Hao Ding, Jose L. Porras, Masaru Ishii, Mathias Unberath for the paper titled "Towards Controllable Video Synthesis of Routine and Rare OR Events"

Runner-up:

Nural Yilmaz, Juo-Tung Chen, Hao Ding, Chenhao Yu, Spencer Huang, Ji Woong Kim, Mariana Smith, Naren Nimmagadda, Alejandro Chara, Brendan Burkhart, Anton Deguet, Mathias Unberath, Axel Krieger for the paper titled "Imitation Learning for Supervised Autonomous Tumor Resection in Central Airway Obstruction"

Honorable Mention:

Xinwei Ju, Rema Daher, Danail Stoyanov, Sophia Bano, Francisco Vasconcelos for the paper titled "Multi-Modal Monocular Endoscopic Depth and Pose Estimation with Edge-Guided Self-Supervision"

• Machine Learning in CAI Award
  Celebrates exceptional methodological contributions to the field, with a focus on machine learning techniques in computer-assisted interventions.
  Sponsored by ImFusion & semaphor.

Winner:

Julia Alekseenko, Pietro Mascagni, AI4SafeChole Consortium, Nicolas Padoy for the paper titled "GEN-Guard: Correcting Generalization Failures for Deployable Federated Surgical AI"

Runner-Up:

Yueyao Chen, Kaini Wang, Dario Tayupo, Arnaud Huaulmé, Krystel Nyangoh Timoh, Pierre Jannin, Qi Dou for the paper titled "DSTED: Decoupling Temporal Stabilization and Discriminative Enhancement for Surgical Workflow Recognition"

• Bench-to-Bedside Award
  Highlights research with strong clinical relevance and translational impact, particularly studies with significant clinical or pre-clinical validation.
  Sponsored by IHU Strasbourg and NDI.

Joint Winner:

Rozenn Raffaut, Rob Moss, Agostino Stilli, Danail Stoyanov for the paper titled "Imaging Skins: Stretchable Gd2O2S:Tb X-Ray Detectors for Image-Guided Surgery"

Joint Winner:

Yue Yang, Fabian Necker, Christoph Leuze, Michelle Chen, Andrey Finegersh, Jake Lee, Vasu Divi, Bruce Daniel, Brian Hargreaves, Jieying Wu, Fred Baik for the paper titled "Markerless Augmented Reality Registration for Surgical Guidance: A Multi-Anatomy Clinical Accuracy Study"

Honourable Mention:

Colton Barr, Colin Galvin, Amirali Azimi, Sarah Frisken, Steve Pieper, Gabor Fichtinger, Alexandra Golby, Parvin Mousavi for the paper titled "Local LLMs as Cooperative Agents for Low-Cost Surgical Navigation Support"

Audience Choice Awards

These awards are selected through live voting by IPCAI attendees during the conference:

• Best Presentation Award
  Sponsored by Siemens Healthineers, IHU Strasbourg, NDI, ImFusion & semaphor.

Winner:

Francesco Dettori, Ilias Nahmed, Michel Duprez, Juan Verde, Pablo Alvarez, Stéphane Cotin for the paper titled "Personalization of Liver Microwave Ablation Simulation"

• Best Long Abstract Award
  Sponsored by Siemens Healthineers, IHU Strasbourg, NDI, ImFusion & semaphor

Winner:

Oscar Cipolato, Tobias Leuthold, Marius Zaech, Georg Maennel, Dennis Kundrat, Sam Aegerter, Calinda Sciascia, Alexander Jessernig, Marco Von Salis, Sima Sarcevic, Jachym Rosendorf, Václav Liska, Romain Quidant, Inge Herrmann for the paper titled "Robotic Laser Tissue Soldering for Atraumatic Soft Tissue Fusion Guided by Fluorescent Nanothermometry"

Reviewer Recognition

• Outstanding Reviewer Awards
  Honoring reviewers who provided consistently high-quality, constructive feedback. Nominees are shortlisted based on Area Chair ratings and final selection is made by non-conflicted Program Committee members.

Pablo Alvarez, Inria

Kendall Feeny, University College London

Dianye Huang, Technical University of Munich

Sreeram Kamabattula, Intuitive Surgical 

João Ramalhinho, EnAcuity

Katharina Steeg, Justus-Liebig-University Gießen 

Nural Yilmaz, Johns Hopkins University