Executive Leadership

Our team brings more than 200 years of combined professional experience in healthcare innovation.

CEO & Co-founder

Ajay Houde, Ph.D., MBA

Ajay is a strategic & results-oriented leader with a strong track record of development & launch of differentiated medical technologies and products. He is a visionary & an award-winning innovator with several patents & scientific publications. He is passionate about making a positive difference.
Accounting & Finance Officer

Pramod Sathe, MBA

Accomplished Finance and Accounting Executive with Global Experience. Developed and implemented robust systems and controls to drive rapid growth, optimize cash flow, and maintain regulatory compliance for early & mid-stage, high-growth companies.
CTO & Co-founder

Naren Vyavahare, Ph.D.

Naren is Director of Cardiovascular Implant Research at South Carolina Bioengineering Centre of Regeneration and Formation of Tissues (SC BioCRAFT) and Hunter Endowed Chair at Clemson University. Naren is an inventor and author of 80+ research publications.
Post-Doctoral Associate

Dipasha Sinha, Ph.D.

Dipasha is a bioengineer who graduated from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, before earning a doctorate degree from Clemson University in 2021. Her research interest is focused on cardiovascular and tissue engineering.
Strategy Officer

Patrice Gerard

A dynamic and engaging leader with demonstrated experience building and motivating high-performing teams to achieve measurable results. Patrice brings over 25 years of operating experience, entrepreneurial leadership, and global experience in the healthcare industry.
Legal Counsel

Brit Young

An innovative attorney with extensive experience as General Counsel and corporate attorney with over 18 years of experience, including with a start-up healthcare company, and mergers and acquisitions.

Clinical Advisory Board & Collaborators

Scientific Collaborator

Lakshmi Dasi, Ph.D. FACC, FAIMBE

Dr. Dasi is a Georgia Tech PhD who came back to Georgia Tech Coulter BME in 2020 after establishing his research program at Colorado State University and then Ohio State University. Dr. Dasi did postdoctoral work with Regents Professor Emeritus Ajit Yoganathan. Dr. Dasi's research interest includes prosthetic heart valves, cardiovascular biomechanics, biomaterials, and devices. He also works internationally to develop low-cost heart valves in low-resource countries and has received special funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Indian government for these efforts. His team’s patient-specific precision medicine technology helps with personalizing trans-catheter procedures.
Clinical Advisor

John E. Mayer, M.D

Dr. Mayer has more than 35 years of experience in pediatric medicine and has authorized 345 peer-reviewed clinical journal publications. John is currently a Senior Associate in cardiac surgery at Boston Children's and a Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.
Pre-clinical Advisor

Richard Bianco, Ph.D

A Professor & Director of Experimental Surgery, University of Minnesota's Medical School. Richard has authored research articles focused on pre-clinical trials of cardiovascular devices, mainly prosthetic heart valves. He is actively involved in The American Heart Association & the Heart Valve Society of America.
Clinical Advisor

Robert J. Levy, M.D

Dr. Levy holds several prestigious positions. To name a few, Dr. Levy is the Principal Investigator and Chair of the Philadelphia Pediatric Device Consortium (PPDC) Clinical and Scientific Advisory Committee; the Endowed Chair in Pediatric Cardiology at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP); Section Chief for Research in the Division of Cardiology at CHOP.
Clinical Collaborator

Holly Bauser-Heaton, MD, PhD, FSCAI, FACC

Holly Bauser-Heaton MD, PhD completed her interventional cardiology training at Stanford University before joining faculty at Emory University in 2016. She currently is the co-director of the pulmonary artery rehabilitation program at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. Her time is equally split between congenital interventional cardiology and basic science with a laboratory investigating mechanisms of pulmonary vascular disease through a 3D bioprinted model.
Scientific Advisor

Kevin Maher, MD

Kevin Maher, MD, is a professor of Pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine and the director of the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU) at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. He attended medical school at the University of Maryland and then completed a residency and chief residency in pediatrics at the University of Maryland. He completed a fellowship in pediatric cardiology at the University of Michigan and then additional Cardiac ICU training at DuPont Children’s Hospital.

In 2004, Dr. Maher joined the Division of Pediatric Cardiology at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Emory University. He currently serves on the Cardiac Executive Leadership Committee to help direct the current and future activities of the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Heart Center.

Dr. Maher’s research activities include heart failure in children, pediatric medical device development, Big Data and Analytics, and the application of technology to pediatric research and innovation. He has published more than 75 articles and has presented his research worldwide. Dr. Maher also works on several research collaborations between Children’s and the Georgia Institute of Technology and serves as the medical director of the Pediatric Technology Center at Georgia Tech, where he is an adjunct professor of Biomedical Engineering.

Business Advisor

Robert Storey

Robert (Bob) Storey is the Managing Partner of The LaunchPort™ in Baltimore, Maryland, an innovative for-profit venture center for early-stage medical device companies entering the regulatory approval process and preparing for commercial adoption. He is also appointed as Vice Chairman to the State of Maryland's Life Sciences Advisory Board and has been active in efforts of collaboration between the FDA, Payors, Device companies and Providers to develop a high value medical device demonstration hub in the Capitol Region.

Mr. Storey currently serves as a Portfolio Executive for the National Institutes of Health Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) investment initiative dealing with the US’s SARS-CoV-2 testing crisis. He is also the NIH’s Medical Device Expert for the I-Corps @ NIH™ program and has led international cohorts in the Lean Start-up area in Asia/Pacific, Africa, Europe, Middle East, and South America.

As an Executive in Residence for Johns Hopkins University, he serves on the External Advisory Board for the Johns Hopkins Center for Biomedical Innovation and Design, the Strategic Advisory Board for Johns Hopkins Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics, the JHU Applied Physics Lab Technology Commercialization Panel, the Investment Review Committee for the Bisciotti Fund, and is the Director of the Evaluation Core for the newly awarded Neurotech Harbor initiative (an NIH hub award to Johns Hopkins/Howard University – one of two nationwide).

After earning degrees in chemical engineering and chemistry at the University of Arkansas, Mr. Storey joined Exxon Corporation in Houston, where he worked in performance materials technology, business planning, mergers, and acquisitions for close to 15 years. He was an advisor in Exxon’s Corporate Controller organization, held Sales and Marketing management positions, and crafted the formation of Exxon Chemical’s international joint venture with Mitsubishi Petrochemical. Mr. Storey left Exxon to become General Manager of a privately held engineering company in Maryland. He led the company through a successful sale to Clariant Corporation of Switzerland, where he served as Vice President of Clariant’s Performance Products division.

Following Clariant, Mr. Storey led Vapotherm, Inc. (NYSE: VAPO), a medical device company that specialized in non-invasive respiratory devices, as founding President and CEO. While with the firm for over a dozen years, he received the U.S Commerce Department’s Export Achievement Award, the Maryland World Trade Center International Leadership Award, and Deloitte’s Technology National Fast 500 award four times.

Business Advisor

Gregg Tobin

Gregg Tobin is currently the President & CEO of a medical device manufacturing company. He has more than twenty years of progressive career experience focusing on growing the revenue and profitability of $MM companies, both public and private. Gregg's experience includes growing and leading companies in multiple industries, with a strong focus in Medical Devices. As an operating executive and private equity investor, he has acquired and invested significant capital in many operating companies.

We develop innovations that save lives.

Our purpose drives us to be the world leader for soft tissue healing technologies. Our unique principles drive us to achieve our goals:

Customers

Actively engaging with our customers (patients, surgeons, and healthcare networks) is essential in identifying gaps in the healthcare needs of the communities we serve. Addressing the customer's needs is at the core of everything we do.

Creativity

Identifying the right partners and leveraging our resources to reduce our customers' economic burden requires creative thinking and innovating new strategies.

Collaboration

Addressing unmet healthcare needs requires collaboration and teamwork with our customers to develop new technologies that help save lives.

Confidence

Implementation and application of innovative technologies require an ecosystem where there are trustworthy actions and nurturing relationships. Our focus is to build confidence by collaborating with our customers to identify and address unmet needs to reduce the emotional and economic burden of the people we serve.

Together, let's improve the quality of life for children and adults around the world.