A collaboration between professors Peter Allen, Nabil Simaan (formerly professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia, now at Vanderbilt) and Dennis Fowler has resulted in an innovative new approach to minimally invasive surgery. They have developed a novel robotic platform for minimally invasive single-port surgery—Insertable Robotic Effector Platform (IREP)—that they say is the world’s smallest in required diameter (∅15 mm) that can enter the body while enabling dual-arm-dexterous operation, 3-D visualization and automated instrument tracking.