The Surgical Innovation Training Laboratory (SITL) is a 17,000 square feet, state of the art facility dedicated to contemporary and future surgical training, innovation and technological research.

The full realization of the SITL is the result of an extensive collaboration by a multidisciplinary team who have been working together over the past several years to develop its conception. The multidisciplinary team who made the SITL possible include Cannon–Bailey architects, UIC engineers, surgeons and research scientists from the UIC Departments of Surgery and Neurosurgery, technicians, and Veterinarians.

The SITL facility includes a main central space that is arranged in a manner that enables the space to be staged and reconfigured to adapt to the needs of different training events for any surgical specialty. It has eight modules, which are able to accommodate the usage of a maximum of 24 Robotic Stations.

The main lab is surrounded by seminar/classrooms, dedicated areas for research, simulation, imaging, 3D printing/reconstruction, tele-surgery, artificial intelligence interaction, and traditional surgery with cutting edge communication and visualization technologies.

Every room is equipped with Network Device Interface (NDI) with both Wi-Fi and fiber optical cable internet connection, allowing for virtual case demonstration attendance with live broadcasting from clinical operating rooms.

The SITL has been made possible thanks to multiple contributions: The UIC Departments of General Surgery and Neurosurgery, philanthropic donors, Medical Companies, thhe UIC Campus and Medical College.

The mission of SITL is to foster radical innovation in surgical education and research, thus embracing the digital transformation of surgery, while also preparing the future generation of surgeons.

The growing role of imaging technology, robots, artificial intelligence, simulation and virtuality will replace traditional surgical work, which will create a new alliance among humans, machines and artificial intelligence. This new alliance of “digital surgery” will allow for the perfect operation with super selective, scarless, bloodless, painless, and functional surgery, resulting in ultrafast recovery and perfect outcomes. Anyone who shares in this vision will be welcome in the SITL, and without boundaries. The SITL "motto" is from Luis Pasteur “Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world".