John Sheets (Boston Scientific)

John W. Sheets, Jr., Ph.D., is currently serving as Senior Vice President, Corporate Research, for Boston Scientific Corporation. In this newly created position, John leads Boston Scientific’s research function. He has established a renewed strategic direction for product and technology research activities while acting as an agent for change within the broader development organization to help advance the Company’s Corporate Technology Plan and Strategy.

Prior to joining Boston Scientific, John served as Corporate Vice President of Research and Development and Chief Technology Officer at Bausch & Lomb, leading the company’s global research and development function for its Vision Care, Pharmaceutical and Surgical business units. He directed efforts that led to 20 new product launches, which grew the company’s pipeline value by 140 percent.

John earned Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Florida, where he earlier earned a B.S. in Zoology. He has been recognized as the inventor on 12 U.S. patents involving ophthalmic, bariatric and general surgery products.

Adre du Plessis (Children’s National Medical Center)

Adré J. du Plessis is the Chief of Fetal and Transitional Medicine at Children’s National Medical Center and Professor of Pediatrics at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. He was previously the Director of Fetal and Neonatal Neurology at Children’s Hospital Boston, and Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He developed and directed the first pediatric program dedicated to neurocritical care, as well as the largest program in fetal-neonatal neurology at Children’s Hospital in Boston.  His research and clinical activities are focused on mechanisms of injury to the immature brain in high risk populations including the fetus and infant with congenital heart disease, infants born prematurely, and infants exposed to perinatal asphyxia. He has developed techniques for evaluating continuous cerebral blood flow and metabolism at the bedside of such high-risk infants using primarily near infrared spectroscopy.

Robert Tasker (Children’s Hospital Boston)

Robert Tasker directs the Pediatric NeuroCritical Care program at Children’s Hospital Boston, the first of its kind in the world. During the 1990s, he witnessed the disappointment of physicians who tried to protect adults and children from brain damage after stroke, head injury and spinal cord injury using “neuroprotective” drugs. While the drugs were a failure, the effort to develop them helped launch the field of neurocritical care. The failed trials left in their wake new, specialized critical care teams, and a rethinking of human physiology. They also led to a more systematic, trial- and outcomes-driven approach. 

Hari Eswaran (University of Arkansas for Medical Science)

Professor Eswaran has worked in the area of fetal monitoring for the last 16 years and has been part of the SARA Research Team. Along with Dr. Lowery, who is a Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialist, he was instrumental in the design of the SARA fetal MEG system. Professor Eswaran’s area of expertise includes biomedical instrumentation, developing and applying new analysis techniques to improve the quality of fetal magnetoencephalographic (MEG) signals. Over the years he has undertaken several fetal MEG, fetal MCG and magnetomyography studies and as the Scientific Director has supervised other members of the SARA team. He has been funded by NIH grants both as a PI and Co-PI for the last 12 years and has published several papers on fetal neurological assessment, fetal cardiac assessment, and magnetomyographic evaluation of uterine activity. With Professor Eswaran’s interdisciplinary background and expertise in fetal MEG, he believes that he can make valuable contributions to the development analysis tools that can improve the fetal neurological monitoring.

Patrick Purdon (MGH)

Patrick L. Purdon, Ph.D., is an Instructor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School, and an Assistant in Bioengineering at Massachusetts General Hospital.  He received his A.B. in Engineering Sciences from Harvard College in 1996, his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1998, and his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at MIT in 2005,.  Dr. Purdon’s research interests include the systems-level mechanisms of general anesthesia, multimodal functional neuroimaging, and biomedical signal processing.  In 2009, Dr. Purdon was awarded the prestigious NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, given to a select few early stage investigators each year who show exceptional promise and creativity.

Eric Panken (Medtronic)

Eric Panken is a Senior Principle Scientist and technical fellow at Medtronic Inc. He has been employed at Medtronic since 1988 and has worked in the fields of cardiac pacing, implantable monitoring, and neurostimulation. He obtained his undergraduate degrees in physics and mathematics from Duke University and master degrees in electrical engineering, statistics, and computer science from the University of Minnesota. His areas of interest include real-time applications of signal processing and machine learning techniques to biomedical signals, algorithms, and research study design.

Polina Anikeeva (MIT)

Polina Anikeeva joined the faculty of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in July 2011 as AMAX career development assistant professor. Her research focuses on micro- and nano-structured optoelectronic materials for neural recording and stimulation devices. Before joining MIT, Polina was a Dean’s postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, where she developed implantable devices for simultaneous optical stimulation and high-throughput electronic recording from neural circuits in awake freely moving mice. She holds a BS’03 in Physics from St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University and a PhD’09 in Materials Science from MIT.

Vijay Modur (Novartis)

Dr. Vijay Modur is Head of Diagnostic Discovery in Novartis Molecular Diagnostics based in Cambridge, MA, USA. He is responsible for incorporating novel diagnostic strategies into drug development to improve patient outcomes. Prior to joining Novartis Molecular Diagnostics, he was the Cambridge Site Head for Oncology Biomarkers and Clinical imaging at Novartis Oncology. His responsibility was to develop and execute biomarker strategy and translational sciences efforts to support the development of majority of the compounds in the Novartis oncology pipeline. Dr. Modur’s career has focused on converting research and biomarker tools into clinically useful diagnostic tests in oncology, neurosciences and cardiology.

Avi Schroeder (MIT)

Avi Schroeder is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Robert Langer’s Lab at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Avi received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the Ben Gurion and Hebrew Universities in Israel in 2009.  He is the author of 19 peer-reviewed papers and inventor of 9 patents. Among others, Avi is a recipient of the Intel Nanotechnology-, TEVA Pharmaceuticals-, and the Wolf Foundation PhD Awards.

William “Rick” Weitzel (University of Michigan)

Dr. Weitzel conducts research in many areas of medical device development for application in patients with renal and vascular diseases. Research interests include End Stage Renal Disease, vascular access for dialysis, dialysis access surveillance techniques, bioengineering, and novel imaging modalities including ultrasound strain and elasticity imaging. Dr Weitzel’s research is currently concentrated on imaging, and includes laboratory studies and human trials to develop novel imaging methods to measure the mechanical properties of blood vessels, dialysis vascular access, and transplanted kidneys. Other areas of interest include artificial organ technologies and novel dialysis techniques, biopsy needle design and other medical device design.

Grant Kruger (University of Michigan)

Dr Kruger is a Research Investigator in the departments of Mechanical Engineering and Anesthesiology at the University of Michigan. In 2006, he received his doctorate in Electrical Engineering from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in South Africa. Thereafter, Dr. Kruger lectured in the Department of Mechatronics before pursuing postdoctoral research at the University of Michigan in 2007. His research and publications cover areas from manufacturing to biomedical engineering.  His current research focus is health informatics systems, specifically the advancement of intelligent signal processing technology and the development of novel devices to meet the challenges of modern medicine and improve the delivery of healthcare toward the future.

Allan Goroll (Partners/MGH)

Dr. Goroll, a general internist, is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Physician, Medical Service, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).  He graduated summa cum laude from Brandeis University and cum laude from Harvard Medical School.  He is one of the modern pioneers in primary care, having initiated the nation’s first residency track in primary care internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital (where he served his residency), and lead-authored the first textbook of primary care internal medicine (Primary Care Medicine, now in its 6^th edition).  In his role as a clinician educator, he chaired Harvard’s Core Medicine Clerkship and led a national initiative to reform the curriculum of the Core Medicine Clerkship, emphasizing generalist competencies and outpatient training.  In 2000, he received the National Award for Career Achievement in Medical Education from the Society for General Internal Medicine; in 2003, he was recognized with the Gold Foundation Award for Medical Humanism by the Harvard Medical School graduating class; and in 2007, he was made a Master of the American College of Physicians.  He has also served as President of the Massachusetts Medical Society and as Massachusetts Governor of the American College of Physicians. Dr. Goroll continues to practice and teach primary care internal medicine at the MGH while actively working on health care reform, having served as chair of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative, and currently chairing the Massachusetts Coalition for Primary Care Reform and the Payment Reform Task Force of the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative in Washington, D. C. .  He enjoys sailing and travel.

Mike Harsh (GE) 

Michael J. “Mike” Harsh is Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for GE Healthcare, a $17 billion division of General Electric that helps its customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. GE Healthcare consists of diverse businesses including medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, technologies facilitating drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, and performance improvement and performance solutions services.

Mike leads the global Science and Technology Organization for GE Healthcare, focusing its research and development teams on creating and sustaining innovative diagnostics, healthcare IT, and life sciences product offerings that reduce healthcare costs, improve healthcare quality, and increase patient access to healthcare globally.

Igor Pivovarov (Hemacore)

CEO & Co-Founder of HemaCore, Co-Founder & Member of Board of several companies. 6 years basic research experience – biophysics, mathematical modeling. 15 years business experience – engineer, CTO, CMO, CEO. Raised ~$22M investments.

HemaCore – biotech company, develops new medical devices and methods for hematology. Company was invested by RUSNANO to bring to the market “Thrombodynamics” – new global assay for monitoring and prognosis of blood clotting disorders: bleeding and thrombosis (precursors of heart attacks and strokes.)

Jessica Harberer (Partners)

Jessica Haberer, MD, MS, received her B.S. in the Biological Sciences and M.S. in Health Services Research from Stanford University, as well as a medical degree from Yale University. She completed an internship and residency in Internal Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. After finishing her training, Dr. Haberer worked for the William J. Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative in Beijing, China, where she served as a Clinical and Research Advisor to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention/ National Center for AIDS, Division of Treatment and Care. Upon returning to the United States, she joined the faculty in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco as a Clinical Educator. Dr. Haberer developed in interest in adherence to HIV antiretroviral therapy (ART) while in China and began studying multiple measures of ART adherence among children and adults in developing settings. Dr. Haberer joined the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Medicine and Center for Global Health, as well as the Harvard Institute for Global Health, in 2008, where she is actively involved in the study of wireless adherence and health status monitoring technologies and strategies for developing settings, as well as adherence to pre-exposure prophylaxis against HIV infection.

Ada Poon (Stanford)

Ada received her B.Eng degree from the EEE department at the University of Hong Kong and her Ph.D. degree from the EECS department at the University of California at Berkeley in 2004. Her dissertation attempted to connect information theory with electromagnetic theory so as to better understand the fundamental limit of wireless channels. Upon graduation, she spent one year at Intel as a senior research scientist building reconfigurable baseband processors for flexible radios. Afterwards, she joined her advisor’s startup company, SiBeam Inc., architecting Gigabit wireless transceivers leveraging 60 GHz CMOS and MIMO antenna systems. After two years in industries, she returned to academic and joined the faculty of the ECE department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Since then, she has changed her research direction from wireless communication to biomedical systems. In 2008, she moved back to California and joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University.

Nikolay Vasilyev (Children’s Hospital Boston)

Nikolay V. Vasilyev graduated from I.M. Setchenov Moscow Medical Academy in 1998. He completed his residency and fellowship training in cardiovascular surgery at A.N. Bakoulev Center for Cardiovascular Surgery in Moscow. He completed his research fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Vasilyev currently serves as a Staff Scientist at the Department of Cardiac Surgery at Children’s Hospital Boston and as an Instructor in Surgery at the Division of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. His research interests include development of beating-heart intracardiac procedures, in particular, new imaging techniques, computer modeling and simulation, and device design. To date Dr. Vasilyev has published over 45 peer-reviewed papers, 5 book chapters, over 50 abstracts and submitted 3 patent applications. He is a member of the International Co-Operation Committee of the European Association of Cardiothoracic Surgery, member of the American Heart Association and an invitational member of the Roland Hetzer International Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery Society.

Bryan McLaughlin (Draper Labs)

Bryan L. McLaughlin received his Ph.D. in 2008 from the University of Cambridge in Electrical Engineering, with a research focus of developing microwave and optical characterization techniques to rapidly screen donor liver organs prior to transplantation.  These devices are currently in human clinical trial in the UK.  Since 2008, Dr. McLaughlin became a research and development scientist at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory.  He currently leads several projects at Draper that advance new technology for neural interface applications.  His research interests are micro-system and hermetic micro-packaging of implants for pain and neural interfaces, optical-electrical neural interfaces, neural stimulation, minimally invasive electrographic recording devices, and radio-frequency antennas.  He is published in the areas of dielectric and optical spectroscopy, efficient antenna design, and seizure detection systems.  Dr. McLaughlin has served on the scientific review board for the Peer Reviewed Medical Research Council for the Department of Defense, is a member of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biological Society, and also a member of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society.

Ben Calhoun (UVA)

Benton Calhoun received his B.S. degree from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. In January 2006, he joined the faculty at the University of Virginia in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, where he is now an Associate Professor. His research interests include body area sensor nodes (BSN), low power digital circuit design, sub-threshold digital circuits, SRAM design for end-of-the-roadmap silicon, variation tolerant circuit design methodologies, and low energy electronics for medical applications. Dr. Calhoun is the author of Design Principles for Digital CMOS Integrated Circuits (NTS Press, 2012) and a co-author of Sub-threshold Design for Ultra Low-Power Systems (Springer, 2006). He received the University of Virginia All-University Teaching Award in 2010, a DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2007, and is co-recipient of the 2011 DAC/ISSCC Student Design Contest Award and of first place in the 2009 ISLPED Low Power Design Contest.