Moshe Shoham

Moshe Shoham was born in Haifa, Israel and studied at Yavneh high-school. After serving in the IDF’s Golani brigade, he started studying Aeronautical Engineering at the Technion and earned a B.sc. in 1978. He then worked for two years in Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) as an aeronautical engineer. Shoham continued his studies at the Technion in 1980. He received his M.Sc. in mechanical engineering in 1982 and his D.Sc. in 1986. He authored the thesis “End-Effector Guidance of Robotic Arms” under Yoram Koren’s supervision.

Academic career

Shoham joined Columbia University, New York as assistant professor in the department of mechanical engineering in 1986.

In 1990 he returned to the faculty of mechanical engineering at the Technion as a senior lecturer and headed the robotics laboratory. He was promoted to associate professor in 1997, and to full professor in 2004. A year later he was endowed the Tamara and Harry Handelsman Academic Chair at the faculty. Shoham is also the head of the Leumi Robotics Center, which was founded in 2009 at the faculty. Shoham retired in 2020 as an emeritus professor.

During his career, Shoham was a visiting professor at the departments of mechanical engineering of Stanford University, California, City University of Hong-Kong and Columbia University, New York.

Shoham has supervised 45 graduate students.

Shoham is married to Tova. They have four sons and he is one of the founders of Hoshaya, where he lives. Their third son, Nadav, was killed in a snowstorm in Nepal in 2014. The Technion’s Robotraffic Competition was named after him.

Shoham founded, together with Eli Zehavi, Mazor Robotics (Nasdaq: MZOR) in 2001. The company develops and manufactures a robotic guidance system for spine surgery, and was acquired by Medtronic in 2018 in a $1.64 billion deal, the largest biotech acquisition in Israel.

In 2011 he co-founded Microbot Medical (Nasdaq: MBOT) which develops micro-robotics for surgical procedures, and in 2017 he co-founded Diagnostic Robotics. The company uses AI and predictive analytics to cut healthcare costs.

In 2017 Shoham founded Tamar Robotics, which develops an endoscopic surgical robotic system for “small cavity” procedures. In 2020 he co-founded Forsight Robotics, which develops robots for ophthalmic surgery.