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Leonardo da Vinci had the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio in glorious Renaissance Florence to inspire his early innovative mind, and Thomas Jefferson could putter about in Monticello, in the Virginia countryside, sketching inventions after leading a nation. But the myth of the modern inventor, silicon heroes like Bill Gates and the Google guys, says that the humbler the surroundings - a parent’s basement or a friend’s garage - the more likely genius will strike.

By that logic, Dr. Michael R. Treat must be on to something.

Just beyond the elevated tracks of the 1 and 9 subway that cut through the Riverdale section of the Bronx, next door to Williams Funeral Home and an Off-Track Betting parlor, in a ramshackle single-story strip mall, Dr. Treat is hard at work on an invention he hopes will change the way surgeons work in the operating room.

“Meet Penelope,” Dr. Treat said, motioning toward a robotic arm poised over a set of surgical tools. “She is one hot little number.”

And Penelope is looking for a job.

She is meant to replace the scrub nurse, the person in the operating room who hands the surgeon the tools of surgery. Responding to the ever-widening shortage of nurses in the country, and looking to deal with a problem that frustrated him as a working surgeon, Dr. Treat and his team of tech whizzes are working feverishly to get Penelope ready for her public debut.

New York-Presbyterian Hospital has agreed to test Penelope in March in the operating room on a simple removal of a benign cyst. If all goes well, Dr. Treat dreams of putting a Penelope in every hospital across the country.