Martin Phelan is a Project Manager at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) in Stuttgart, Germany, approved by the President of the Max Planck Society, where he leads multiple projects on the development of clinically-ready cardiovascular technologies. He currently serves as the CEO of EndoSurge, a Max Planck spinoff focusing on the development of MR-safe robotic medical devices to enable radiation-free interventions. EndoSurge has been recognized as the 2025 KUKA Innovation Award Finalist and has been pitched at the 2023 Falling Walls Science Summit in front of notable organizations including the Nobel Foundation and Google.

Before joining the Max Planck Society in 2018, he worked as an R&D Engineer in the Advanced Technology Group and Corporate Research Division within Boston Scientific Corporation in Marlborough, Massachusetts. In this role, he filed patents in the areas of cardiac ablation and electrophysiology, urinary stress incontinence, and kidney stone removal. He obtained his PhD and Masters degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in 2022 and 2017, respectively. He was the winner of the Falling Walls Lab Baden-Württemberg and was nominated to the MIT 35 Innovators under 35 list in 2024 for his PhD and startup work. Dr. Phelan is currently affiliated with the European Cancer Organization as a Young Cancer Professional and actively participates in MAXMINDS, an online mentoring program to connect Max Planck employees with Bachelor and Master student affected by the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria on February 6, 2023. He is the inventor of numerous patents related to novel medical device technologies, including coronary artery disease, MR-safe steerable technologies, and medical robotics. His work has been published in Advanced Science and presented at prestigious research and startup conferences around the world. Dr. Phelan has also served as a panelist on "AI Innovation in Baden-Württemberg" at the Startup BW Summit in Stuttgart and moderator for the 2024 Falling Walls Lab - Baden-Württemberg.