Kirby Witte

Kirby Witte is currently the VP of Engineering at ESTAT Actuation, a position they have held since October 2020. Prior to their current role, Kirby served as a Senior Mechanical Engineer at ESTAT Actuation from March 2019 to October 2020. Before their time at ESTAT Actuation, Kirby was a Mechanical Engineer at Intuitive, where they worked on designing safety critical robotic systems for minimally invasive surgery. Kirby's roles have included mechanical design, design for manufacturing and assembly, risk analysis and product testing and validation.

In their previous role as a Senior Mechanical Engineer at ESTAT Actuation, Kirby was responsible for performing risk analysis and managing the life cycle for the next generation robotic surgical platform. Additionally, Kirby performed failure analysis and developed solutions for continuous improvement of the Single Port robotic surgical system.

Kirby has also had experience in designing and implementing protocols for life testing and validation of robotic systems, as well as blue-sky concept development for the next generation of surgical robotics.

Outside of their engineering experience, Kirby has also served as an undergraduate research assistant at the University of New Mexico's Center for High Tech Materials and as a project lead at the university's Department of Interdisciplinary Film and Digital Media (IFDM).

Kirby Witte received a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to that, they earned a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico School of Engineering.