Richard Packer probably doesn’t get confused for Konosuke Matsushita very often (first off, Packer’s a lot taller), but listening to the CEO of Zoll Medical Corp. speak about his vision for the company can conjure images of the legendary founder of Panasonic and his 250-year business plan.
MassDevice Q&A
MassDevice Q&A: Richard Schumacher
Richard Schumacher is no stranger to successful start-ups. The Pressure BioSciences founder, president and CEO had a hand in five early-stage life science ventures, including Boston Biomedica.
MassDevice Q&A: Grant McGimpsey
The late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s impact on both the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the country will live on in the policies he helped shape and push through Congress.
But another, lesser-known contribution from the youngest Kennedy brother to the field of prosthetics research will be on full display at Worcester Polytechnic Institute Sept. 16, when WPI hosts Neuroprosthetics 2009, its first symposium, at the Center for Neuroprosthetics.
MassDevice Q&A: Philipp Lang
Philipp Lang wears a lot of hats. Besides being the founder, president, chairman and CEO of ConforMIS Inc., he’s a radiologist and former director of the Musculoskeletal Radiology and Distinguished Weissman Chair at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and associate professor at Harvard Medical School.
But ConforMIS and its breakthrough custom knee implant technology aren’t Lang’s first forays into the startup medical device world. He also founded Imaging Therapeutics Inc. (where he remains chairman) and served on the board at ViOptix Inc.
MassDevice Q&A: John McDonough
John McDonough, CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based T2 Biosystems Inc., is an optimist.
Bullish on his 22-employee company’s prospects (the estimated $40 billion diagnostics market might have something to do with that), McDonough (far left in the picture at right) spoke with MassDevice about the technology behind T2’s diagnostic device, which uses a miniaturized version of a magnetic resonance imaging machine to deliver near-instant test results from just about any blood, urine or saliva sample.
MassDevice Q&A: Thomas Taylor
Tom Taylor grew up in Grand Blank, Mich., just a short drive from Flint and the belly of General Motors’manufacturing machine.
The son of an auto executive and a registered nurse, the president of
Roush Life Sciences always felt the pull of the two industries.
While a plastics engineering student at Ferris State University, Taylor worked at the GM technology center. But the idea of spending a career locked in a cube as a “right panel guy” forced him reconsider his options, a decision that today looks positively prescient.
MassDevice Q&A: Jean-Marc Wismer
You literally cannot see glaucoma coming.
Although it’s one of the leading causes of blindness in the world, frighteningly little is known about a disease group that affects 4 percent of the world’s population over the age of 40. No cure is on the horizon. And due to the insidious nature of the disease, which stars gradually affecting sight from the periphery, most people don’t even know they’re suffering from glaucoma until it’s too late.
Swiss diagnostics company Sensimed AG sees this mysterious disease as a real opportunity.
MassDevice Q&A: Dean Kamen
Dean Kamen is rarely at a loss for words. In fact, the man is rarely at a loss for anything.
At a recent conference at Boston University, Kamen, 58, took up more than triple his allotted time for a keynote speech as he worked the assembled tech-heads and computer geeks into a near-frenzied lather amid shouts of “Dean for President,” and basked in the warm embrace of a nearly five-minute standing ovation. Definitely not your average conference fare.
MassDevice Q&A: Stuart Randle
Stuart Randle, president and CEO of Lexington-based GI Dynamics, has a long career in medical devices under his belt. Originally a mechanical engineer with a degree from Cornell University, Randle got into the device world during his MBA studies at Northwestern University and never looked back.
MassDevice Q&A: Charles Remsberg
Charles Remsberg literally learned the medical device business from the ground up.
The 47-year-old’s first job in the industry was sweeping the floors in a warehouse. That’s also where he learned that it’s more important to be judged by your work than your alma mater’s pedigree.
The Long Island native’s resumé includes stints ranging from clam digger to his current role as CEO of the American division of Hocoma Inc. in Rockland. Switzerland-based Hocoma produces the Lokomat, a robotic rehabilitation system that helps people suffering from spinal cord injuries and brain trauma learn how to walk again by acting as their legs.
MassDevice Q&A: Shawna Gvazdauskas
Shawna Gvazdauskas has a knack for bringing medical devices to market. The 53-year-old is on the third start-up of her 30-year career. In March, she left insulin management maker Insulet, where she helped bring the company’s flagship Omnipod to market, for a new challenge at Isis Biopolymer Inc., which is developing a new generation of non-invasive drug delivery patches.
