When Dr. Patrick Codd was a neurosurgery medical resident, he treated a 2-year-old with a large brain tumor. The tumor had caused fluid build-up, and Codd needed to drill a hole into the child's skull to relieve pressure.
Later, as he helped with another surgery on the child to remove the tumor, he wondered why he couldn't simply use the same opening he'd already created from the first surgery to perform the operation.
"It turns out that's a much more challenging question," he said. "If you magically were able to do that with some tool, you would have been able to minimally invasively remove the tumor in a way that required a Band-Aid."
Unable to shake that question, Codd began searching for a solution.
Over the past 11 years at Duke, Codd has worked with robotics engineers to develop technologies aimed at one day accomplishing what he suggested: A robot that can precisely remove a tumor at the press of a button, free from the limitations of human dexterity.
In 2025, Codd earned one of 94 patents awarded to Duke University, which ranked 32nd in the Top Worldwide Universities Granted U.S. Utility Patents List published by the National Academy of Inventors . The patents issued to Duke cover a wide range of areas, from biomedical and imaging technologies to quantum systems and environmental solutions.
A patent for "surface and subsurface tumor mapping for computer-guided laser surgery" was awarded Aug. 19, 2025, with Codd listed as one of the system's three inventors. Two other patents connected to the flexible robotic technology Codd helped create have been granted to Duke in the past four years.
All of them are related to a single premise: "We were trying to answer one basic question, which is, can I remove this tumor automatically? That's it," Codd said.
What's involved in doing that is more complex because it includes creating a tool that can not only reach a tumor, but differentiate it from healthy tissue, remove the tumor, stop bleeding and "don't mess up anything that's normal," Codd said.
The 2025 patent is for technology designed to do just that: identify tumors, the blood vessels feeding them, and then use laser surgery to cut off that blood supply. Duke's Brain Tool Laboratory brings together experts from neurosurgery and the Pratt School of Engineering working together to develop the robotic surgery technology.
"The overall goal is, how do you more precisely remove tissue and know what you're doing, and do it more safely and accurately than we do now," Codd said.
Codd is working on that, one patent at a time.
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