Speaker Biographies

Engineer
Takatoshi Abe is a technology research Manager with Panasonic North America in California. He graduated from the Master’s Program of Tokyo Institute of Technology majored in Materials Science and Engineering. Takatoshi has been with Panasonic for 12 years. His experience includes product development and manufacturing technology roles for a variety of electronic material technologies including circuit board laminates, electrical conductive materials and optical material products. Currently, Takatoshi is the leader for Panasonic’s stretchable materials development program in the US.

Dr.
Dr. Aminat A. Adebiyi has been a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at IBM Research Almaden for three years. She specializes in Internet of Things (IoT) Engineering for Biomedical Applications. Her research area entails the use of sensors to build closed-loop device solutions for healthcare, with a focus in Aging and Rehabilitation. She is also the Lead Principal Investigator for Analytics on the Electronic Nose project. A proud native of Lagos, Nigeria, Dr. Adebiyi received her Bachelors of Science (B.S.) degree in Biomedical Engineering in 2009 from the University of Southern California, and her Masters of Science (M.S) in Biomedical Engineering in 2010 with a specialization in Regulatory Science. In 2016, Dr. Adebiyi became a lifetime Trojan when she also received her Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering at USC from her research with the visually impaired. Dr. Adebiyi has published works in high impact conferences and journals. She is also the inventor of the IBM Watson Motion and Prediction prototype, aimed at detecting and preventing falls in the elderly. Dr. Adebiyi is an avid mentor, and an advocate for equal representation of women and minorities in science and engineering.

Research Scientist
Aaron Anderson is a member of the LANL Biosensor Team, and works to advance medical diagnostics in the laboratory, in the clinic, and in the field. His current research focuses on instrument development, device design and integration, and surface chemistry as they relate to biological assay development. He has worked at LANL since 2003 in a diverse set of fields ranging from medical isotope production to peptide synthesis. Prior to his time at LANL, Aaron worked in the pharmaceutical industry (Array Biopharma, Inc., 1999-2003), and earned a M.S. (Colorado State University, 1999) and B.S. (College of Idaho, 1997) in Chemistry.

CEO
Dr. Karim Arabi is founder and CEO of Atlazo, Inc. developing AI semiconductor and software for edge computing applications targeting the rapidly growing hearing aid, hearable, wearable and ultra-low power health and medical IoT markets. Previously, he was Vice President, R&D at Qualcomm where was head of Corp. R&D ASIC and Hardware responsible for research and development and new product development. Karim was VP, Engineering and Technology at Dialog Semiconductor responsible for driving overall technology and new product development. Karim held technical positions at PMC Sierra and Cirrus Logic and was co-founder of Opmaxx, an innovative startup in analog design and test acquired by Credence in 1998. Karim obtained his Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Polytechnique Montréal, Canada and his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Tehran Polytechnic. Karim has published more than 100 papers in accredited journals and international conferences and holds several key patents.

Research Microbiologist
Dr. Maria T. Arévalo, is a Research Microbiologist with DTRA, matrixed at the CCDC Chemical Biological Center. She received her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering and Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Rochester. Dr. Arévalo has expertise in the field of emerging, infectious diseases caused by viruses including alphaviruses (chikungunya, Mayaro), flaviviruses (dengue, Zika, yellow fever), and bunyaviruses (Rift Valley fever). She has extensive BSL-2/ABSL-2 and BSL3/ABSL-3 laboratory experience and serves as the technical lead for nanopore sequencing efforts to identify biological efforts in the field.

Prof
Dr. Gregory W. Auner is a Strauss/TEAMS (Technology and Engineering Applications in Medicine and Surgery) Endowed Chair and Professor in the Department of Surgery and Biomedical Engineering. He also has appointments in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering the Department of Physics at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. He is the Director of Research for the Detroit Institute of Ophthalmology at Henry Ford Health systems Department of Ophthalmology and Scientific Member Developmental Therapeutics Program- Karmanos Cancer Institute. He is the founder and director of the Smart Sensors and Integrated Microsystems (SSIM) program at WSU which encompasses 8 centrally located laboratories over 150 participating faculty, graduate students, staff scientists/engineers, and undergraduate researchers. He has developed an array of instruments, sensors and microsystems, software and communication systems for federal institutions and industry. Approximately 90% of his research involves the research and development of microsystems, nanosystems, intelligent deep learning systems and BioMEMS systems. He has performed extensive research for the Department of Defense, The National Institute of Health, the National Science Foundations, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and the Biomedical Advance Research and Development Authority in the areas of water borne chemical and bacteria sensing , Radiation dosimetry in human exposure, airborne pathogen detection, signal analysis, and encrypted communications. He has been the Principle Investigator on more than $40 M in peer reviewed funding grants and contracts. He has over 40 patents (issued and pending) in the last several years for bio implants, chemical, biomedical, and environmental sensing with Raman spectroscopy, and microsystems lab on a chip development. He has over 300 peer reviewed publications and over 4000 citations. He has received a number of awards including Crain’s Healthcare Hero Award 2018, the Strauss Endowed Chair, Induction to the 2007-2008 Class of Leaders & Innovators, WSU Alumni Faculty Service Award, RARE Foundation’s Everyday Hero Award, the Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Advancement of Knowledge- American Society for Reproductive Medicine to name a few. Dr. Auner was appointed to the National Academies Board on Manufacturing Design and Engineering in 2004. He is also the Co-Founder and Chief Science & Technical Officer at Seraph Biosciences and Visca, LLC, - Wayne State University SSIM program spin-off companies.

Principal Engineer
Francois Beauchaud is based in Sunnyvale, California in the Business Development team at Bosch Sensortec where he actively works on the topic of Internet of Things and on new product initiatives. From 2010 to 2014, he held the position of Senior Field Applications Engineer North America at Bosch Sensortec. Previously, he worked as Applications Engineer for Bosch Sensortec in Germany from 2008 to 2010. He graduated with a Masters Degree in Electronic Engineering from the Institut des Sciences Appliquees (INSA) of Lyon, France in 2007. While pursuing his Engineering Diploma, Francois Beauchaud obtained a Master Degree in Microelectronics from the University Claude Bernard of Lyon.

CEO
Gavi Begtrup, Ph.D. is the Chief Executive Officer of Eccrine Systems, Inc., a platform biotechnology company focused on enabling precision dosing through measurement of individual drug responses in eccrine sweat. Dr. Begtrup previously founded and was CEO of an agricultural materials startup and has supported technology commercialization and startup formation for research organizations and venture investment. Dr. Begtrup is an expert in micro- and nano-electromechanical systems, is the author of popular and scientific articles, and is an inventor on multiple issued and pending patents for novel nanoscale devices and sweat sensing systems. Prior to a career in technical entrepreneurship, Dr. Begtrup was the Policy Advisor for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords developing legislation in oversight of NASA, DOD, and other federal agencies. He also served as science and technology policy fellow at the National Academies of Science. Dr. Begtrup received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley and his B.S. from Western Kentucky University.

Mike received his B.A. in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and his Ph.D in Biophysical Chemistry from Princeton University. Mike continued his academic research career as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Northwestern University and as an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin Medical School-Milwaukee Clinical Campus. Mike then entered the in vitro diagnostic industry where he held product development positions of increasing professional responsibility. Mike gained expertise in the preparation of FDA IDE and PMA medical device submissions for lasers used for vision correction surgery at Bio-Reg Associates. At QIAGEN (formerly Digene), Mike led the Regulatory /Clinical Affairs Group that prepared numerous FDA PMA submissions for the first FDA approved HPV DNA test for cervical cancer screening. Mike Benecky joined GSK in October 2011 as Senior Director, Global Regulatory Affairs in Precision and Digital Medicine located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. In the area of Digital Medicine, Mike currently assists GSK Teams in regulatory strategy during use of digital health technology in both clinical trial and commercial settings. Recent projects include the commercial launch of the MyAsthma mobile medical app in the EU and inclusion of digital sensors and mobile apps within GSK clinical development programs.

Research Microbiologist
Dr. R. Cory Bernhards is a Research Microbiologist for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Research and Stem Center of Excellence Division (CBR) and conducts research in the BioSensors Branch at CCDC Chemical Biological Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD. His research focuses on the development of novel identification systems for biothreat agents including rapid sample preparation, field-deployable isothermal amplification, and nanopore genomic sequencing technologies. Previously, Dr. Bernhards was an NRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Ft. Detrick, MD where he gained extensive BSL-3 research experience. His research focused on the lipopolysaccharide (LPS) of Burkholderia pseudomallei and Burkholderia mallei, and he led an effort to design a Burkholderia peptide mimotope vaccine. In addition, Dr. Bernhards conducted decontamination research on Bacillus anthracis spores. Dr. Bernhards received a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Virginia Tech in 2013 with an emphasis in molecular microbiology and protein biochemistry under the mentorship of Dr. Florian Schubot. His dissertation focused on elucidating the protein regulatory cascade of the type III secretion system in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Dr. Bernhards also received a B.S. in Biological Sciences from Virginia Tech in 2007 with a minor in Chemistry.

CEO
Marcie Black is CEO and co-founder of Advanced Silicon Group. Dr. Black brings to the company expertise in building strong teams, managing development projects, patents, IP strategy, encouraging a healthy company culture, cost modeling, and running a startup. In addition, Dr. Black has a strong technical background in the areas of electronic materials, optics, semiconductors, solar cells/photovoltaics, batteries, renewable energy, nanotechnology, device design, and opto-electronics. Prior to founding ASG, Marcie was the President and co-founder of Bandgap Engineering, which focused on lowering the cost of solar electricity through black silicon or silicon nanowire solar cells. Before joining Bandgap, Marcie was a technical staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory and worked on a variety of nanotechnology and optical systems. She began at Los Alamos National Labs as a prestigious Director’s Funded Post Doc, developing organic and nano solar cells. Marcie has a Ph.D. from MIT in Electrical Engineering, under the supervision of Institute Professor, Mildred Dresselhaus. Prior to her Ph.D. work, Marcie was a device engineer at Motorola where she was on a small team responsible for combining non-volatile memory and logic onto the same chip. She improved the manufacturing yields by working with the process engineer to improve silicide formation. In 2009, she was awarded an R&D 100 award for her contributions to work at LANL. Marcie also was honored as one of the ten “Women-to-Watch in 2010” by Mass High Tech. Marcie has over 30+ papers and more than 15 issued patents with many more pending.

Dir Advanced Product Platforms
Mark E. Buccini has 32 years of embedded system application experience focused on low energy in the areas of energy harvesting, personal medical devices, human machine interface, energy metering, smart grid, wireless sensor networks, intelligent motor drives and voice recognition. During his career at Texas Instruments he has been responsible for advanced mixed-signal product platform architecture, new product development strategy and execution, director of microcontroller applications, product marketing and has served as a staff member supporting the company’s Kilby Research Labs. In addition to strategic responsibilities, Mark has authored over 100 papers that have been published around world including in the Wall Street Journal, Dallas Business Journal, IEEE, EDN, APEC, ESC, Sensors Expo and even Nuts and Volts and Garden Railroads among many others. The technical workshops he has created have been delivered live to over 40,000 engineers worldwide. Mark lives in Allen, Texas, is married with two children and has a Bachelor's of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.

Managing Partner

WL Smith Prof & Dir of NSF Ctr
Ahmed A. Busnaina, Ph.D. is the William Lincoln Smith Chair Professor, Distinguished University Professor and founding Director of the National Science Foundation’s Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (CHN) for High-rate Nanomanufacturing since 2004, the Advanced Nanomanufacturing Cluster for Smart Sensors and Materials (CSSM) since 2015 and the NSF Center for Nano and Microcontamination Control at Northeastern University, Boston, MA. Prior to joining Northeastern University in 2000, he was a professor and a director of the Microcontamination Control Lab at Clarkson University from 1983-2000. Dr. Busnaina is internationally recognized for his work on nano and micro scale defects mitigation and removal in semiconductor fabrication. He specializes in directed assembly of nanoelements and in the nanomanufacturing of micro and nanoscale devices. He developed many techniques for directed assembly and nanomaterials based manufacturing of nanoscale structures for energy, electronics, biomedical and materials applications. His research support exceeds $58 million. He authored more than 600 papers in journals, proceedings and conferences. He also has 22 granted and 40 pending patents. He organized and chaired more than 175 conferences, workshops, sessions and panels for many professional societies. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Nanoparticle Research. He also serves on many advisory boards including Samsung Electronics; Chemical Industry Nanomaterials Roadmap, International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, Journal of Particulate Science and Technology, Journal of Environmental Sciences, Semiconductor International, Journal of Advanced Applications in Contamination Control. He is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, National Academy of Inventors and the Adhesion Society, a Fulbright Senior Scholar and listed in Who's Who in the World, in America, in science and engineering, etc.). He was awarded the 2006 Nanotech Briefs National Nano50 Award, Innovator category, the 2006 Outstanding Faculty, SØren Buus Outstanding Research Award, Northeastern University 2006, the 2005 Aspiration Award, Northeastern University.

CTO
Highly accomplished medical roboticist and seasoned leader of engineering teams that delivered breakthrough innovation in surgical robotics. Previously was the Director of Advanced Robotics at Medrobotics, where he led the development and release of the first flexible surgical robotics platform, grew the engineering team from two to fifty people, and took numerous surgical robotics products through 510k clearance.

Co-Founder & CEO
Cavan’s professional background spans multiple disciplines including product design, UIUX, and corporate rebranding. He has a history of disruption, invention, and innovation, applying his expertise at market-leading global companies such as Apple, New Balance, and Vans. Seeing the potential of machine learning and motion recognition in the recovery space, Cavan founded FocusMotion to become a cutting-edge, reimbursable platform that closes the feedback loop between physician and patient while creating efficiencies of care in the orthopedic recovery and musculoskeletal injury markets. The vision at FocusMotion is to use never-before-available, broad-spectrum data insights in recovery from a massive, proprietary, and high quality data set to revolutionize recovery methodologies on a per patient, per case basis.

VP R&D
Rafael Carbunaru is Vice President, Research and Development for neuromodulation at Boston Scientific. He is focused on developing a portfolio of neuromodulation technologies and creating a culture of meaningful innovation and high performance. His team has developed breakthrough products in spinal cord stimulation for chronic pain and deep brain stimulation for movement disorders. Rafael’s personal mission is to transform lives through innovative medical technologies. Prior to this role, Rafael was the Research & Development Director for Emerging Indications. He led the development of micro-stimulation and MRI compatible technologies and supported clinical trials. Rafael received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University and his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Universidad Simon Bolivar in Venezuela. He was named to the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Rafael holds over 60 U.S. and international patents.

Founder & CEO
Debbie Chen has a B.S. in Bioengineering from UCSD and a Ph.D. from Tufts University. For her thesis, she developed an early diagnostic tool based in near-infrared spectroscopy to diagnose early peripheral neuropathy. She did a Postdoc at UCSD Medical School in Pathology specializing in diabetic neuropathy and a second Postdoc at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, developing a 3D in-vitro plankton microscope. She was an Imaging Scientist at Sanford Burnham Prebys (SBP), managing the High-Content Screening Microscopy Core for Drug Discovery. In July 2018, she decided to make the plunge into entrepreneurship, combining her optical device expertise and her passions as an amateur Muay Thai fighter. She realized that there is a need for a personalized, continuous hydration monitor for athletes as well as in hospitals and believes that hydration monitoring should be the standard of care in sports and healthcare. Hydrostasis is a B2B initially focusing on collegiate teams to provide a continuous hydration sensor wearable and team analytics platform. Patented sensor design and algorithms combine measures of blood flow, skin tone, fat content, as well as hydration into a personalized hydration index. Machine learning algorithms provide an optimal hydration range for each individual and notifies coaches and athletes before they exit their optimal range, thereby avoiding symptoms of dehydration and overhydration. After customer validation and traction in the sports sector, Hydrostasis aims to enter into the Healthcare system in 2021.

Director, Standards Facilitation
Michelle Deane currently serves as the American National Standards Institute’s program director in the Standards Facilitation group supporting ANSI's Organizational Member Forum, which provides a forum for U.S. professional societies, trade associations, standards developers and academia to come together to discuss national and international standards and conformity assessment issues of interest. Ms. Deane also serves as the committee manager for several international standards development committees and works with U.S. interests on national, regional and international standardization in a variety of sectors including healthcare. Ms. Deane originally joined ANSI in 1993 and served for over seven years in the standards facilitation department. She left the Institute’s full-time staff to pursue consulting opportunities, but continued to provide her expert services in several capacities on a contractual basis, including as senior program manager for the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP), a cooperative partnership between the public and private sectors which achieved a widely accepted and useful set of standards that enabled and supported widespread interoperability among healthcare software applications. Ms. Deane rejoined ANSI as a director in 2012. She received her Bachelor’s degree in sociology and criminal justice from the State University of New York at Albany. ANSI is a not-for-profit membership organization that brings together organizations from both the private and public sectors dedicated to furthering U.S. and international voluntary consensus standards and conformity assessments. ANSI accredits national standards developing organizations and approves American National Standards. It is the sole U.S. representative to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), via the U.S. National Committee.

Managing Director
David DiPaola is Managing Director of DiPaola Consulting, LLC. As an engineer / entrepreneur, David specializes in providing inspiration, design and commercialization of products for his customers. The inspiration side of his business provides leadership consulting to startups and existing corporations. This includes due diligence for mergers and acquisitions, product growth strategies, market analysis, organizational restructuring and more. The design and commercialization sides help customers bring their electromechanical products from concept to high volume production and all the steps in between. Currently David holds six patents and serves customers in medical, automotive, industrial, defense, consumer electronics and architecture. Previously, David held technical staff and leadership positions at Texas Instruments and Sensata Technologies and was VP of Global R&D for TT Electronics, PLC.

CEO
Pinpoint Science cofounder and CEO Lisa Diamond has a 40-year record of technology innovation and engineering leadership, from pioneering development in molecular diagnostics and computational genomics to financial applications, business intelligence and analytics, computer animation, digital video and more. For over 15 years she’s worked toward novel molecular diagnostics for pathogens including pandemic influenza, Zika, Ebola, TB, and holds patents for novel diagnostics. At Stanford, she developed molecular probes for cancer and bird flu, and to analyze the vaginal microbiome. She also developed panels of multiplexed probes to identify pathogens and characterize resistance and virulence. Diamond led development of infrastructure and trading applications for leading financial institutions as VP of Technology Innovation at Reuters, head of Market Data Engineering at Tibco Finance Technology, and VP of Architecture and Strategy for Global Market Data Systems at Merrill Lynch. Earlier in her career, she pioneered groundbreaking real-time graphics, animation and digital video.

Founder & CEO
Sundip R. Doshi is Founder and CEO of AerNos, Inc., a nano technology-based gas sensor company that develops multi-gas sensors for third party integration into IoT devices used for monitoring air quality, detecting hazardous gases and other e-nose applications. As the chief architect of the technology at AerNos, he sets the strategy and vision for the company. Sundip has over 25 years of C-level executive experience in technology and business with expertise in sensor development, nanotechnology, semiconductors, IP, software-as-a-service and cloud infrastructure. He has created technology products for healthcare institutions and telecommunications, appliances, consumer products, state and local governments, and technology companies around the world. Sundip received his Bachelor of Science degree with Departmental Honors in Computer Science from California State University, San Bernardino. In 2009 he was recognized as a College of Natural Science Outstanding Alumnus for his contribution to the university, community and his industry.

Principal Engineer
Mr. George Duval has been designing medical devices in imaging, telemetry and emerging technologies for over 15 years. For most of his career, he has been a sensor technology innovator for medical devices finding disruptive technologies, leading teams for rapid prototyping and delivering on early proof concepts within new exploratory ventures to launch new businesses, for companies like Philips and Boston Scientific. Currently, he’s involved in growing an endoscopy business by advancing diagnostic capabilities for Boston Scientific. George has several patents pending at USPTO on advanced sensors and imaging technologies designed to help diagnose diseases in the GI tract.

Senior Sensor Engineer, RSM
Dr Andrea Fasoli obtained his PhD at the Electrical Engineering department of the Cambridge University (UK), working on synthesis and characterization of semiconducting nanowires, and their assembly into nanoelectronic devices. He continued his work as a Research Fellow at the Emmanuel College, Cambridge. In 2012, he moved to the Bay Area and joined Hitachi GST (later merged by Western Digital) to develop novel materials and architectures for Hard Disk Drives media. In 2016, he joined the IBM Almaden Research Center where he is currently a Research Staff Member and the technical lead of the Sensor team, developing gas sensing solutions which leverage cognitive algorithms.

Entrepreneurship Advisor and Associated Researcher
Dr. Juan E. Figueroa is Entrepreneurship Advisor and Associated Researcher at the Puerto Rico Science, Technology, and Research Trust (Trust) responsible for working with researchers and innovators to transform the results of their research and ideas into product concepts with high potential for commercial success. He also works in the search for research and commercialization funds from private and government sources for the Trust community. Dr. Figueroa retired from the National Science Foundation in January 2014 where he served since 2002 as a Program Director in the Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) after spending over twenty years in R&D management positions in the electronics and communications industries. At NSF he managed over 600 awards ranging from $100K to over $1M. Dr. Figueroa supports the Organization of American States as an instructor to their Commercialization HUB series. He is also Senior Technology Adviser to the DC ArchAngels, a national investment group based in Washington, DC and to SensorComm Technologies.

Senior Vice President Digital Medicine
Dr. Jeremy Frank is Senior Vice President of Digital Medicine at Proteus Digital Health and is responsible for the formulation and development of digital medicines, as well as the technical operations, required by Proteus and its pharmaceutical partners. Prior to his current role, Jeremy led all regulated product development efforts at Proteus (wearable sensors, ingestible sensors, medical software, and systems integration) and the launch of Proteus’ first commercial pilot, Helius, in the United Kingdom. Also, he was responsible for oversight of the qualification and scaling of the manufacturing operations of Proteus’ ingestible sensor. Dr. Frank holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

Senior Principal Algorithm Development Engineer - Artificial Intelligence
Dr. Elaine Gee is a Senior Principal Algorithm Development Engineer specializing in artificial intelligence in the Advanced Engineering group at Medtronic Diabetes. Dr. Gee leverages her 15 years of experience to lead technical teams in the design and development of machine learning algorithms and infrastructure to support next generation medical devices for diabetes management. Before joining Medtronic, Dr. Gee was the Director of Bioinformatics at ARUP Laboratories where she built scalable clinical bioinformatics analytical pipelines and infrastructure for genomic sequence analysis. She earned a B.S. in Physics from the California Institute of Technology and a PhD in Biophysics from Harvard University.

Vice President, Mergers & Acquisitions
Andy Gilicinski is an innovation-focused R&D Executive that believes in the power of science to craft market disruption that creates value for business and consumers, and improves sustainability. His 32 year career started at public companies (Air Products, Gillette and Clorox), and his more recent experience is with privately owned Georgia-Pacific and now currently at family-owned SC Johnson. He began his career as a PhD chemist at the bench, driving science roles as he grew his accountabilities into executive leadership. At Georgia-Pacific, he ran product development for a $5B North America business, then was recruited to SC Johnson, to lead global R&D for Glade air fresheners (SC Johnson’s largest brand). In his current role, Gilicinski co-leads M&A for SC Johnson, driving acquisitions to strengthen innovation and growth across the firm. Gilicinski’s proudest achievements are market-disruptive innovation launches. These include a fragrance renaissance for Glade (fueling new sources of growth), a new Stainmaster carpet care line (disrupting a stale segment and growing share), launching the GreenWorks natural cleaning brand (tripling the US natural cleaning market in first year), creating a new antiperspirant odor-fighting technology (sparking growth for Right Guard), and developing a novel low-VOC coating resin (driving capacity expansion and market disruption). He earned his Bachelor of Science degree with High Distinction from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, and a PhD in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison

President
Roger H. Grace is president of Roger Grace Associates (Naples, FL) which he founded in 1982 as a marketing consultancy serving the sensor, MEMS, IC and capital equipment markets. He holds B.S.E.E. and M.S.E.E. (as a Raytheon Company Fellow) degrees from Northeastern University where he was awarded the “Engineering Alumni of the Year” Award in 2004. He was a visiting lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley College of Engineering from 1990 to 2004. He is the Vice President of the Americas for the Micro and Nanotechnology Commercialization Education Foundation (MANCEF) which he co-founded in 1996. rgrace@rgrace.com/www.rgrace.com

Program Dir

Sr. Director Product Management
To be added

Prof
Newton Howard is a brain and cognitive scientist, and the former Director of the MIT Mind Machine Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is a Professor of Computational Neuroscience and Functional Neurosurgery at the University of Oxford, where he directs the Oxford Computational Neuroscience Laboratory. He is also the Director of MIT's Synthetic Intelligence Lab, the founder of the Center for Advanced Defense Studies and the Chairman of the Howard Brain Sciences Foundation. Professor Howard is also a Senior Fellow at the John Radcliffe Hospital at Oxford, a Senior Scientist at INSERM in Paris and a P.A.H. at the CHU Hospital in Martinique.

Senior Scientidt
Pawan Jolly is a Senior scientist with biotechnology development expertise focusing specifically on biosensor development. Pawan has a PhD in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from University of Bath, UK, Masters in biomedical engineering from FH Aachen, Germany and a Bachelors in Biotechnology from Amity University, India. Pawan has been working in the area of chemo- and bio-sensors for over a decade, gaining understanding in the real-world needs and challenges for the commercialization of electrochemical biosensors. Pawan joined the Wyss Institute at Harvard to address the technical challenge of sensor surface fouling for the development of electrochemical sensors as a part of project Abbie. Pawan’s main interest is to translate the current electrochemical platform technology at the Wyss to commercialized products. Pawan’s current research area includes biosensors detecting very small analytes e.g. histamine, organ-on-chip technology, DNA as a memory storage technology, microencapsulation and phage display screening. Pawan Jolly has published more than 25 papers in the span of 4 years during his PhD studies and has experience working on multiple patent applications.

Physician Scientist
Dr. Kakarmath is a digital health scientist at Partners Healthcare Pivot Labs and an Instructor at Harvard Medical School. His research is focused on the evaluation of the clinical utility of digital health solutions, including machine learning and artificial intelligence-based products. Dr. Kakarmath's team works closely with technology innovators from academia, startups and industry giants to guide the ideation, design, prototyping, validation, and deployment of digital health solutions. His work has been published in prestigious journals and showcased at major academic conferences such as those of the American Academy of Neurology, the American Medical Informatics Association, the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research, the Connected Health Conference, Precision Medicine Summit and HIMSS.

Prof
Edwin C. Kan received the B.S. degree from National Taiwan University in 1984, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1988 and 1992, all in electrical engineering. From 1997, he was an Assistant Professor with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, where he is now a Professor. His main research areas include RFID, biosensors, RF indoor locating and tracking, CMOS technologies, semiconductor device physics, flash memory, and numerical methods for PDE and ODE. Dr. Kan received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineer (PECASE) from President Bill Clinton in October 2000. He has published over 250 journal and referred conference papers and has graduated 30 Ph.D. students. He also received several inventor and teaching awards from Cornell Universities.

Founder & CEO

Director of Applications Engineering
Andrew Kelly is the Director of Applications Engineering at Cirtec Medical - formerly Cactus Semiconductor - located in Chandler, Arizona. Prior to joining Cactus Semiconductor, he was a Senior Principal IC Design Engineer at the Medtronic Microelectronics Center. Throughout his 30+ year career, he has defined and designed more than 30 full-custom mixed-signal ICs for a wide range of portable, wearable, implantable, and ingestible medical devices such as; glucose meters, hearing aids, neuro-stimulators, cardiac pacemakers, drug infusion devices, bio-sensors, orthopedic sensors, and ingestible sensors. He currently serves as the chairman of the Industry Advisory Board at the Center for Neurotechnology, and is a Senior Member of IEEE.

Digital Health Transformation Consultant
Amir is a technology-driven leader and a clinical neuroscientist specialized in digital health transformation. His strategic vision is focused on digital innovation empowered by real-world data to enable the discovery of clinical insights otherwise not possible based on conventional data collection methods. Amir has boundless passion for accelerating novel therapies and creating a path for better patient experience. He brings an entrepreneurial zeal to the world of drug development through mobile technology, sensor intelligence, remote monitoring, and AI analytics. Prior to pharma, Amir was a professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School where he had substantial clinical experience as a PI on numerous clinical trials with 200+ publications and conference presentations.

CEO
Mr. Lerner has over 30 years of executive experience in the IT sector, most notably in microelectronics and Nano-technology manufacturing development. He has served in senior management positions in both large and small organizations throughout Europe, the United States and several SE Asian countries. Steve is currently Founder and CEO of Alpha Szenszor Inc., a gas sensor start-up leveraging the unique properties of Carbon Nanotubes, and based in Burlington, MA.

Sr Engineering Manager
Megan Little is a Senior Engineering Manager in the R&D team at Medtronic Diabetes. In her 11 years with the company, she has been awarded 3 patents and leads a team of 13 people as part of Medtronic's development of innovative diabetes technology. Megan has a BSE in Mechanical Engineering from Loyola Marymount University and MS in Engineering Management from CSU Northridge. Megan is based in Los Angeles and in her free time enjoys traveling and brewing kombucha.

CTO & Co-Founder
Maurizio (Mac) is a former software professional with over 20 years of development and technical program management experience in various technologies and industries. He joined Microsoft Italy in 1999, where he worked for 6 years as a consultant and solution architect for top Italian Microsoft customers in the banking, retail, military, telco and manufacturing industries. He moved to USA in 2005 to later join Microsoft Xbox / Entertainment division, where he served as a Senior Program Manager for Xbox LIVE services until 2013. He got the entrepreneurial bug and founded Green Tomatoes, a small start-up focused on IT consulting and mobile application development. He then went on co-founding Sensoria Inc. and Sensoria Health Inc., two of the most innovative companies in the Wearable Tech, where he serves as CTO.

President
Walt Maclay, President and founder of Voler Systems, one of the top electronic design firms in Silicon Valley, is committed to delivering quality electronic products that are easy to manufacture. Voler Systems (www.VolerSystems.com) provides design, development, risk assessment, and verification of new devices for medical, consumer, and industrial, and applications. Voler is particularly experienced in designing wearable devices, using its skill with sensors and wireless technology. Walt has been active in several consultant organizations. He is a senior life member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). He is a reviewer for NSF SBIR grants. He has mentored dozens of startup companies. Mr. Maclay holds a BSEE degree in Electrical Engineering from Syracuse University.

Founder & CEO

Research & Development Lead
Dr. Manesh Kalayil Manian, now working as a Research and Development Lead at Traq, Carlsbad, CA. Previously, he was a senior Scientist at Azure Institute Inc, Acon Lab, San Diego, CA. He completed his Ph.D. at the Department of Industrial Chemistry, Kyungpook National University, South Korea in 2008. From 2008-2011, he served as a postdoctoral fellow in the Prof. Wang research group at the Department of Nanoengineering in UCSD, CA. He has published 48 international journal publication, 3 patents and 1 review article in his research field. His scientific interests are concentrated on research and product development of point-of-care biosensor in health and wellness diagnostics field

Asst Medical Dir & Chief Medical Info Officer
John Mattison, is the Chief Medical Information Officer and Assistant Medical Director for Kaiser Permanente. He focuses on transforming care delivery with information technology, through convergence of exponential technologies and data liquidity. He led the design and implementation of the largest integrated electronic health record in the US, and leads various national programs including virtual care. He has sponsored or led numerous digital innovations, and mentors many digital health startups. He chairs the eHealth Workgroup of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH), and is a board member of Open mHealth, advisory board member of the NIH funded Policy and Ethics in Precision Medicine, teaches at multiple Universities including Singularity University, and has published widely on privacy, policy, security, IOT, global genomics collaboration, interoperability, mobile health, and healthcare transformation. He has published in Nature, JAMIA, JAMA, WSJ, Forbes, and has authored chapters for various books. He has keynoted or hosted many national and international healthcare conferences and has consulted in many countries. He is the founder of the international XML standard for health record interoperability known as CDA, CCD and CCDA, and is an active participant on several global initiatives to bring internet services to underserved communities providing access to both jobs and healthcare.

Associate Professor in Cellular and Molecular Sciences

Sr Manager
Joshua Ness is a 5G Labs Manager with Verizon in New York City. He partners with enterprise, startups, and academic teams to drive innovation around 5G. He also works to educate, inspire, and connect the dots for businesses interested in moving forward with emerging technology.

Senior Research Scientist
Dr. Conor O’Mahony is a Senior Research Scientist with the Tyndall National Institute, and an Adjunct Professor at Chongqing Technology and Business University, China. His team is focussed on the development of Micro Transdermal Interface Platforms (MicroTIPs) – high-value, wearable systems that combine transdermal delivery, diagnostics, self-awareness and communications capabilities. For use in theranostics and advanced woundcare, these ‘smart patches’ interact with the outermost skin layers in a minimally invasive manner, and will blur the lines between implantable medical devices and the current generation of wearable electronics. He has published over sixty peer-reviewed journal papers, given numerous conference presentations worldwide and has filed eleven patent applications in the field of MEMS and micromachining. Dr O’Mahony is a member of the Editorial Board of Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, has chaired two international conferences in Cork, and was a member of the team which received the inaugural University College Cork Research Team of the Year Award 2012. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE.

Dir Sensor Dev
Prasad V.A. Pamidi, Ph.D is the Director of sensor development at Instrumentation Laboratory (IL), Bedford, MA. Since 1998, Prasad has been involved in critical care product development at IL. He has published over 25 research papers in peer reviewed journals, conference proceedings and several patents in electrochemical and optical detection methods used in blood gas and CO-Oximetry analyzers. Prasad has also been an active member of American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC) and American Chemical Society (ACS).

Principal Scientist & Research Program Manager
Ashish Pattekar is a Principal Scientist at PARC, where he has led a variety of R&D projects developing innovative MEMS and medical devices (ballistic transdermal needle-free drug delivery: 'Hypospray'), Thermal management in high-power LED lighting ('Integrated thermal-optical diffusers'), Fuel Cell based energy conversion devices, and Systems for physiological monitoring / real-time patient engagement (‘Hospital readmissions reduction’) and location identification via RFID networks. Prior to PARC, Ashish was Director of Micropower Systems at Nu Element Inc., where he developed fuel cell systems for use on board US Navy aircraft in collaboration with The Boeing Company (Seattle, WA), as part of a project funded by the US Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR). Dr. Pattekar earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Lehigh University and his B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Bombay). He is an inventor on over 60 issued and pending U.S. and international patents, and has co-authored 20+ peer-reviewed articles, conference papers and a book chapter.

Chair & Founder

Managing Director
Mr. Pickering joined Microtech Ventures in 2019 as Managing Director. He has worked more than 35 years in semiconductor and micro-fabrication technology companies and has served in a variety of executive roles in both private and public companies. Prior to joining Microtech Ventures, he was Chief Revenue Officer for Micralyne Inc based in Edmonton Alberta, Canada. Mr. Pickering served as the Executive VP, Sales and Marketing at Exar Corporation a public semiconductor company specializing in analog and mixed-signal semiconductor devices. Paul also served as Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Xpedion Design Systems, a venture-backed EDA company that was acquired by Agilent in June 2006. He has co-founded two venture-backed companies and has consulted with numerous other start-up companies. Mr. Pickering is a graduate of West Chester University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Science degree and attended Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania. He is a recognized speaker at technology conferences and trade events in the Semiconductor and MEMS industries.

CTO
Rob Podoloff has spent the last 30 years developing new products and technologies in areas ranging from healthcare to interactive gaming to consumer electronics. Rob is a listed inventor on over 20 US Patents and is currently the CTO of Tekscan, Inc., the tactile sensor company he co-founded after completing his Master’s degree at MIT. Rob also spends some of his time back at MIT where he serves as a Lab Instructor for senior capstone product design class 2.009 and freshman toy design class 2.00B.

Principal Scientist
Radislav Potyrailo is a Principal Scientist at GE Research leading the growth of GE’s wireless, wearable, and biological and chemical sensing technologies. His research interests include design and excitation of physical transducers, materials with multi-response mechanisms, univariate and multivariate data analytics, and system engineering. He developed sensing technologies for GE Healthcare, Water, Security, Corporate Environmental, Consumer & Industrial, Oil & Gas, Energy, and Transportation. Radislav has been leading programs on inventing new sensing systems and bringing them from the lab to field validations, and to commercialization. He served as a Principal Investigator on NIH, AFRL, DARPA, TSWG, DHS, NETL, and NIOSH-funded programs. He has 120+ granted US Patents and 150+ publications, delivered 80+ invited lectures and 10+ keynote/plenary lectures. His recent recognitions include SPIE Fellow, Senior Member of IEEE, Blodgett Award by GE Research, and Prism Award by Photonics Media/SPIE.

Staff MEMS Design Engineer
Igor Prikhodko, Ph.D. is a Staff MEMS Design Engineer at Analog Devices Inc in the greater Boston area, where he focuses on R&D of advanced inertial MEMS and navigation systems for autonomous vehicles. He has 4 issued US Patents on gyroscope design which is currently in production as ADIS16500 Inertial Measurement Unit. Dr. Prikhodko received B.S., M.S. degrees in Mechanics and Mathematics from the Moscow State University, Russia in 2007 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from the University of California, Irvine in 2008 and 2013, respectively. His work reflected in over 30 peer-reviewed journal and refereed conference papers as well as nominated with an Outstanding Paper award at Transducers 2011, the Best Paper award at IMAPS Device Packaging Conference 2012, and an Outstanding Presentation award at Transducers 2013. He serves as a reviewer for major journals in the fields of MEMS and as a program committee member and a treasurer for the IEEE Inertial Sensors and Systems 2014 through 2020.

Associate Professor

General Manager
Robert is General Manager, Honeywell’s Sensing & IoT; where he manages the Electronic and Gas Sensing business. Prior to his current role at Honeywell, Robert was the Director of Portfolio & Offering Management in the Electronic Sensor business. Prior to joining Honeywell, Robert was a Global Product Manager at Sensata Technologies, where he managed various sensor product lines in Sensata’s Aerospace & Power Management business. Robert has an extensive experience in the sensors industry, which span over 15 years and across various industries; including Automotive, Industrial, Aerospace and Medical. Robert holds a mechanical engineering degree from Virginia Tech and an MBA from the Isenberg School of Management at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Head of Life Sciences Strategy and R&D, HP Labs
Dr. Anita Rogacs has done extensive work in the field of microfluidics, analytical chemistry, molecular biology, nanotechnology, plasmonics, and Raman spectroscopy, authoring over 30 publications. Anita received her M.S. and Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and has studied business at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She is a National Science Foundation (NSF) and Sandia National Laboratories Fellow. After receiving her Ph.D., she joined HP’s CTO office and Labs, where she leads strategy and the technology development of a broad array of diagnostic platforms.

Senior Director R&D
Rob Rubino is Senior Director of R&D at Integer Holdings Company and is responsible for the development of battery technologies for active medical implants as well as material research and analysis. Robert has been in battery R&D for over 20 years and has worked to develop multiple battery technology platforms (QHR, QMR, CFx, Li-ion) that are currently being used in pacemakers, defibrillators, neurostimulators and sensors. Robert holds an M.S. in Medicinal Chemistry from SUNY at Buffalo, and a Bachelor’s degree in Medicinal Chemistry from SUNY at Buffalo. He has co-authored over 20 granted US patents. His current interests include miniaturization of active implants to enable next-generation diagnostics that provide improved patient outcomes.

R&D Systems Engineer
Jeronimo Segovia-Fernandez (S’10-M’15) received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Industrial Engineering with a specialization in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (Spain) and the University of Birmingham (UK) in 2008; and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (USA) in 2015. He was a postdoctoral researcher at University of California, Davis, and worked as an R&D Hardware Engineer at Broadcom Limited. In 2018, he joined Texas Instruments Kilby Labs as an R&D Systems Engineer. Dr. Segovia-Fernandez’ main research has focused on piezoelectric MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) resonators for sensors and actuators and Radio Frequency (RF) wireless communications. His areas of interests include microfabrication techniques, characterization, design, and testing of piezoelectric MEMS resonators, nonlinear analysis, analog and RF integrated circuit (IC) design, and MEMS-IC integration.

Sr Staff Scientist, Manager
Disha Sheth, PhD, is a Sr. Staff Scientist at Dexcom Inc., a leader in the continuous glucose monitoring industry. She manages a team of scientists and engineers and guides projects to make continuous improvements in the CGM technology, to give diabetes patients the best experience possible in management their disease. She was a postdoctoral fellow at FDA where she worked on the interference testing for CGMs. Prior to that she obtained her PhD from Case Western Reserve University and MS from Columbia University in Biomedical Engineering studying biosensors.

VP of Sensor R&D and Advanced Technology
Peter Simpson is the Vice-President of Sensor R&D and Advanced Technology at Dexcom. He is a leading expert in Medical Device development and Glucose Sensing Technologies with over 400 awarded and pending U.S. patents and numerous articles on continuous glucose monitoring and analytical instrumentation. At Dexcom Peter leads the development of next generation products and technologies. Mr. Simpson has been with Dexcom for 17 years and has led or contributed to the development of every generation of Dexcom’s Continuous Glucose Monitors. Prior to Dexcom, he was a founding scientist and Associate Director of Technology Development at DNA Sciences. Mr. Simpson received both his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Applied and Engineering Physics from Cornell University.

Chief Technology Officer
Professor Skafidas received a PhD in electrical and electronic engineering from The University of Melbourne in 1997. From 1998-2004 he co-founded and served as the Chief Technology Officer for Bandspeed, where he co-invented Adaptive Frequency Hopping –technology that exists today in all Bluetooth devices. Bandspeed being eventually acquired by Broadcom Inc. Professor Skafidas also co-founded Nitero, a company formed to commercialise 60GHz technology. Nitero received investment from leading venture funds and was eventually acquired by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) with Stan being appointed as Managing Director for AMD Wireless Australia. Stan, together with his US based colleagues founded MX3 Diagnostics Inc. in 2017, a company with a vision to provide people with the ability to measure and manage their personal health. He is the Chief Technology Officer at MX3, where he spearheads hardware, software and sensor development, leading a team of engineers and biomedical scientists.

Deputy Director
Dr. Stacey Standridge is Deputy Director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office (NNCO) and also serves as the Coordinator for Global Issues for the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), a Federal R&D initiative involving 20 departments and independent agencies. She joined the NNCO in 2011 as a AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow and served in roles of increased responsibility before becoming Deputy Director in July 2018. Dr. Standridge has managed high-profile projects such as the development of the 2014 and 2016 NNI Strategic Plans, and leads interagency cooperation in focused areas of national importance under the Nanotechnology Signatures Initiatives. She has played a critical role in creating and sustaining a long-term collaboration with the European Commission and European scientists on nanosafety research. Dr. Standridge earned her PhD in Chemistry at Northwestern University and a BS in Chemistry from the University of Oregon.

Mahmooda Sultana received her Ph.D in Chemical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Southern California with Summa Cum Laude. She joined the Detector Systems Branch at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in 2010, where she worked in the Detector Development Laboratory (DDL) to develop advanced semiconductor devices, including x-ray detectors and Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS). She worked on the development of Microshutter Array for James Webb Space Telescope. In addition, she led the development of nanomaterial-based sensors, including Multifunctional Sensor Platform and Miniaturized Multispectral Imager using Quantum Dots. Nanomaterial-based sensors offer a significant reduction in resource footprint for future space missions. Mahmooda also worked on several Heliophysics small satellite mission concept development efforts as the Instrument Systems Engineer. She joined the Instrument/Payload Systems Engineering Branch as the Associate Branch Head in 2017. Some of her awards include 2017 GSFC Innovator of the Year, 2018 Robert H. Goddard award for technology development, NASA Early Career Achievement Medal, ISTD New Achiever Medal, Bell Laboratories Research Fellowship, and WmC and Margaret H Rousseau Fellowship at MIT.

Sr Mgr

Asst Prof
Mohan Thanikachalam, MD is a cardiovascular surgeon with a long-standing interest in public health. As a surgeon managing critically ill inpatients and a physician involved in the ongoing projects on case-finding through mass screening and offering community- and home-based services for diabetes and hypertension management, he has first-hand knowledge of the current blood pressure measuring devices and their limitations. To address these limitations, as the principal investigator of a NIH grant, Mohan has led the joint effort (TUFTs and MIT) to develop the ViTrack technology, a first-of-its-kind cuff-less, wearable technology for continuous non-invasive blood pressure monitoring. Mohan is a faculty at Tufts University School of Medicine (TUSM) and an Affiliate Faculty at MIT. His research interests are in the areas of population-based cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk assessment and implementation of community-specific intervention strategies. In partnership with the Joslin Diabetes Center, Boston, Mohan had established a comprehensive CVD and diabetes management program with a custom-built online “virtual care” platform with a primary aim of increasing access to high-quality care, while reducing costs. In addition, with USAID support he has led the efforts to develop a mobile health technology platform, as an adjunct to the management of hypertension and diabetes by non-skilled health workers. His research includes the development and validation of point-of-care technologies for home-based cardiovascular risk assessment and disease monitoring to facilitate more comprehensive, community-based CVD prevention and management strategies. His team has developed a mobile phone-enabled peripheral neuropathy analyzer for persons with diabetes, which is currently being commercialized. He was the lead investigator to develop a patch ultrasound sensor as a point-of-care device for home monitoring of extra-vascular lung water for remote management of congestive heart failure. He has been the lead investigator for the clinical validation of other mobile enabled technologies such as, camera-based vital signs monitor, retinal camera, GynecCam and mobile-enabled spirometer. As part of a NIH D43 Global Health Innovations program, he was involved in the efforts to translate some these technologies to address health disparities in underserved populations in the developing world.

Chief Commercial Officer
Prior to his role at Fluxergy as Chief Commercial Officer, Dr. Ali Tinazli has been leading the corporate-wide, global strategy for Healthcare and Life Sciences for Hewlett-Packard (HP Inc.) and built a new life sciences business at SONY in his earlier career. He also currently serves as Board Member and Angel Investor at various start-up companies ranging from cyber security and digital health to oncology. Dr. Ali Tinazli has a deep background in the science and business of biomedicine and healthcare.

R&D Manager Biomedical Circuits & Systems
Nick Van Helleputte received the MS degree in electrical engineering in 2004 from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. He received his Ph.D. degree from the same institute in 2009 (MICAS research group). His PhD research focused on low-power ultra-wide-band analog front-end receivers for ranging applications. He joined imec in 2009 as an Analog R&D Design Engineer. He is currently R&D manager of the Connected Health Solutions group. His research focus is on ultra-low-power circuits for biomedical applications. He has been involved in analog and mixed-signal ASIC design for wearable and implantable healthcare applications. Dr. Van Helleputte has developed ultra-low-power custom ICs for multi-modal vital signs sensing. His research focused on complete system-on-chip solutions covering all aspects including analog amplification and filtering, analog-to-digital conversion, digital signal and processing power management. He also worked on neural interfaces in the form of active high-density neural probes for the central and peripheral nervous system. In addition to IC design, his research group has a strong focus on highly miniaturized and ultra-low-power systems based on both COTS as well as their custom ASICs. His research collaborations included early pathway research (TRL 1-5) as well as bilateral collaborations with industrial partners towards novel product developments (TRL 5-8). Nick is an IEEE and SSCS member (SSCS Distinguished Lecturer ’17-‘18) and served on the technical program committee of VLSI circuits symposium and ISSCC.

Co-founder & CEO
Venk is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Nanowear, a New York-based connected-care technology platform for non-invasive diagnostics and companion therapeutics built upon first-of-its-kind cloth-based nanosensors. Nanowear was founded in September 2014 and received its first FDA 510(k) Class II clearance in December 2016 establishing Nanowear as the first-and-only company in the world to receive this accreditation for cloth-based cardiac remote monitoring. Nanowear’s first product, SimpleSense, is an undergarment that captures and algorithmically scores 7 metrics from the body, alerting hospital providers of worsening Heart Failure ~3 weeks in advance of a hospitalizing event. Nanowear’s business model centers around its CHF companion therapeutic device and select licensing opportunities of its cloth-based nanosensors to Healthcare OEMs. Before Nanowear, Venk spent ~7 years in Technology Investment Banking, focusing exclusively on venture-backed software and communications technology in which he successfully advised growth companies in over $3bn USD worth of transactions at UBS Investment Bank, Citadel Investment Group and Wells Fargo Securities in New York. Prior to his finance career, Venk spent ~ 3 years in product marketing and sales at Eli Lilly and Sanofi Aventis Pharmaceuticals in New York. Venk received his Masters of Business Administration from Columbia University and his Bachelors of Science & Engineering from Duke University.

Dr. Steven Walsh is a Distinguished Professor and the Creative enterprise professor at UNM’s Anderson School of Management. He has served as the director of the Technology Entrepreneurship Program and is the concentration director for MOT program and ETM program at UNM. Dr. Walsh was a manager at a division of a fortune 500 firm, a project and program manager and General Manager of a small and Medium enterprise. He is also a serial entrepreneur and has helped to attract tens of millions of dollars to firms where he was either a founder, president and or vice president. He has been involved mainly in the emerging technology commercialization space professionally. More specifically he initially focused on semiconductor materials, Pharmaceuticals, Ceramics, and Pheromones. During the last twenty years he has focused his efforts on technology project management and commercialization of emerging technologies like Micro, Nano, biotechnologies, Additive Manufacturing and IoT. He is the president of Janus Ventures Inc. a consulting firm.

Distinguished Prof & Chair

Co-Founder & CTO
Dr. Joshua Windmiller is a leading international authority in electrochemical biosensor technology and instrumentation. His Ph.D. research in electrical engineering at UC San Diego, funded by a Powell Foundation fellowship, focused on the development of printed biosensors, bioelectronics, and biofuel cells. He has published over 50 manuscripts in peer-reviewed scientific journals, delivered over 100 podium presentations at scientific and technical conferences and meetings, and has twelve US patents issued and more than two dozen patent applications pending. Dr. Windmiller, a Gordon Fellow, NIH SHIFT awardee, and two-time NIH Lab-to-Marketplace awardee is the recipient of the Printed Electronics USA 2010 Academic R&D award for his developments in textile-based printed bioelectronics. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Laboratory for NanoBioElectronics at UCSD in 2013, where he was supported by the von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and led a commercialization grant sponsored by the Department of Energy. For his successful product development activities leading to the commercialization of novel printed bioelectronic paradigms, he received the Printed Electronics USA 2014 Product Development award. Dr. Windmiller has served as PI on five SBIR Phase I/II grants sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, including, most recently, the design and clinical evaluation of microneedle-based paradigms for continuous interstitial alcohol monitoring. He currently serves as the Chief Technology Officer of Biolinq, a startup that he co-founded devoted to the development of the novel microneedle-mediated biosensing modalities he has invented for application in the diabetes management domain.

President
Srihari Yamanoor has over 10 years of experience in the medical device industry. He has designed and developed devices, as well as worked on new product introduction, reliability improvements, manufacturing and quality. His areas of work include Diabetes, Women's Health, Dermatology, Cardiology and Oncology. His interests in the future of the industry range from medical device innovation paradigms to the impact of IoT to Artificial Intelligence and Personalized Medicine on the delivery of care. An avid blogger, he discusses both the current status of the industry, as well as the headwinds awaiting for medical device and pharmaceutical development organizations in the future. In 2019, he was named one of the Top 100 Healthcare Leaders at IFAH. His profile can be viewed at https://linkedin.com/in/yamanoor/

Program Analyst
Justin Yang is a Program Manager in the Division of Research, Innovation, and Ventures (DRIVe) at the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). Justin sets the strategy, executes the plan, and manages a portfolio of novel innovative sensors and diagnostics that can be integrated into daily life or made available over the counter to predict, diagnose, and prognosticate presymptomatic exposures to infectious disease and other pathogens.

Founder and CEO
Ingrid van Welie, PhD, is the Founder and CEO of Neural Dynamics Technologies (NDT). She is also a Research Affiliate at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT. Ingrid is an experienced neuroscientist, specialized in the study of the biophysical properties of neurons and how these change during learning and memory. She is an expert in various electrophysiological recording technologies and recently, while at MIT, worked on developing new technologies for recording and manipulating the electrical properties of neurons. Ingrid hails from the Netherlands, where she obtained her PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Amsterdam.