John M. Collins, PhD

John is the Chief Operating Officer and Technology Implementation Director at CIMIT. Before joining CIMIT in 2008, John was president of TIAX LLC and before that Senior Vice Preseident at Arthur D. Little Inc. when he managed its Technology and Innovation (T&I) business. He has spent his career in industry as a leader in technology-driven businesses, with more than 30 years of international experience focused on the accelerated development and commercialization of innovative technologies, products and services.

He received a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and an MS and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a frequent speaker and holds over 20 US patents on new products and manufacturing processes, including trocars and staplers for MIS, blood fluid warmers, and tendon and ligament repair methods.

Mike Dempsey

Mike is an Entrepreneur in Residence at CIMIT. His primary responsibility is to lead the CIMIT Accelerator Program which is focused on finding, funding and facilitating innovations that are to be handed off to industry within twelve to eighteen months. Mike and his team work closely with the project teams to not only advance the technology, but also to develop and execute a complete strategy for getting the innovation into practice.

Mike has been working in the field of medical devices for more than 25 years; during this time he has invented or worked on products that have treated over twenty million people. He was a co-founding of Radianse, a venture-backed company that develops indoor positioning systems for hospitals. Prior to founding Radianse, Mike worked as a technical strategist for wireless solutions at Hewlett-Packard/Agilent Technologies (now Philips Medical Systems). He has helped to develop and introduce dozens of successful products, holds over 40 patents in wireless medical device communications and has ten more patents pending. Mike received a special citation from the Commissioner of the FDA for "exceptional initiative and leadership to protect the public health." He has a BSEE from The University of Michigan.

Eric J. Evans

Eric is an active member of the early-stage investor community in Boston. He sits on the Executive Committee of Mass Medical Angels and on the Screening Committee of Launchpad Ventures. Since many early-stage deals are now syndicated, he also maintains relationships with Hub Investment Group, Boston Harbor Angels and Cherrystone, among others. He has served as CEO for several biomedical companies, including Targeted Cell Therapies, Abazyme, Lumos Catheter Systems, Mulleris Therapeutics and Follica Biosciences. He began his career at Procter & Gamble and at the Boston Consulting Group. Mr. Evans holds a master’s degree in finance and public policy from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and a bachelor’s degree in nuclear physics from Brown University.

Marc Filerman

Marc has over 25 years of healthcare marketing, sales and R&D experience, with a focus on imaging, operating room devices and medical software. He has successfully developed businesses and markets in large and small companies, and led commercialization efforts for academic-based projects. Currently he is Commercial Lead for TriVox Health, a cloud-based software platform at Boston Children's Hospital, and VP Sales and Marketing for Secora.care, a home health and safety startup. Marc has been involved with CIMIT since 2013 and was Program Director, Faculty Member, and Mentor for CIMIT's first Healthcare Commercialization Boot Camp in the summer of 2015. Prior to joining CIMIT, Marc co-founded Cold Spring Diagnostics, a molecular imaging startup focused on improving diagnosis of lower gastrointestinal bleeding. Marc started his career as a Development Engineer at Hewlett-Packard designing ultrasound imaging equipment, and holds Masters and Bachelors degrees in Mechanical Engineering from M.I.T.

Peter Hansen, PhD

Peter Hansen received his degrees from Harvard College and Northeastern University and holds a PhD in Biophysics. In 2010, he was chosen to be a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineers for three decades of inventions in flow cytometry. He has served on the engineering faculties of Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts and MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts before entering a career in commercial science.

While at Northeastern he discovered the coherent 2-photon effect in biological tissues, a microscope technique in wide use today. At MIT he developed non-contact measurements of the thermal constants of tissues undergoing cryo-preservation. He directed biomedical systems research for Johnson and Johnson companies in the decades of the 1970’s and 1980’s; a period which included his invention of the first laser based hematology analyzer, cell sorting systems, cell sizing methods, and the first whole blood immunophenotyping method.  

His early 1980’s work at Massachusetts General Hospital established methods for managing immunosuppression in organ transplantation and HIV and the first immunotherapy using monoclonal antibodies.

Since the late 1980’s, Peter has been the technical founder of four international biomedical systems companies with products addressing sensitive homogeneous immunoassays, multi-species veterinary hematology, flow sorting of model organisms (C. elegans) for pharmaceuticals research, and point-of-care flow cytometry devices for HIV management in rural clinics. In addition to being a principal in PNPRC, Peter is a faculty member for the Madrid-MIT M+Visión Consortium and an affiliate of the Research Laboratory for Electronics (RLE) at MIT. 

Wolfgang Krull

Wolfgang Krull is a Senior Operations Management Professional in the Medical Device Industry with a proven track record of leading complex business, site, operations, supply chain, and product development organizations including two successful startups. His specialties include leading Operations, Strategic Planning, Organizational Development, and Program Management to meet worldwide business, quality, and regulatory requirements.

Wolfgang spent 24 years with Hewlett Packard Medical (now Philips) in multiple functions including executive positions as Director of R&D and Director of Worldwide Manufacturing/Order Fulfillment for the Patient Monitoring Business. In these roles he was responsible for strategic development for the Bedside Patient Monitoring, Digital Telemetry, Central Monitoring, and Cath Lab product lines for critical, intermediate, and coronary care hospital markets.

In 2001, he joined start-up Visualization Technologies (VTI) as Vice President of Manufacturing and Supply Chain responsible for strategic business, process, operational, and organization improvements including initiatives in lean, cost reduction, quality improvements, and new product launch processes for Manufacturing. In 2002, VTI was successfully acquired by General Electric where Wolfgang continued as Vice President of Operations and Supply Chain.

In 2003, Wolfgang joined start-up Breakaway Imaging as Vice President of Operations and Supply Chain responsible for establishing and leading operations, supply chain, quality system, and service organizations and processes for the O-arm Imaging system. In 2007, Breakaway Imaging was successfully acquired by Medtronic and Wolfgang became the Regional Business and Site Manager for the Medtronic’s Navigation and Imaging business responsible for leading product development, operations, quality/regulatory, and factory services organizations for the O-arm business.

In addition to his CIMIT Accelerator Executive role, Wolfgang is the founder and president of Krull Enterprise Services for Operations and Supply Chain (KESSCO) providing “hands-on” management and consulting services to assist emerging, early, and mid-stage medical technology companies develop, implement, and optimize their manufacturing and supply chain operations to meet business goals. Wolfgang has been a Hewlett Packard Fellow, Chairman of the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) College of Engineering Deans Advisory Committee, and Member of the Boston University Software Engineering Advisory Committee.

James E. Muller, MD

Dr. James E. Muller is the director of the CIMIT Vulnerable Plaque and Patient Program.  From 2005 to 2015 Dr. Muller served as CEO and then Chief Medical Officer of Infraredx, Inc. a company he founded to develop an instrument to identify vulnerable coronary plaques.  With the sale of Infraredx to Nipro, Inc., he has returned to academic medicine to develop the full range of activities necessary to improve the prevention of heart attacks.

Infraredx, Inc, successfully developed a multimodality near-infrared spectroscopy and IVUS coronary catheter that can identify the lipid-rich and presumably vulnerable coronary artery plaques that cause heart attacks.  The definitive test of this technology -- an outcomes study in over 1360 patients -- will yield results in June, 2016.  

Dr. Muller formerly served as a Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School where he conducted research for over 25 years on the causes of heart attacks. In 1994, he introduced the term "vulnerable plaque" to describe those plaques likely to disrupt and cause disease onset. Dr. Muller was one of three American Co-founders of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) the organization awarded the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize.

Paul Tessier

Paul is an experienced medical device developer, manager and entrepreneur. He is the Founder of Technology Innovators - a company that deeply researches specific medical problems, then invents solutions to those problems, prototypes and patents the solutions and finally licenses the technology to others. He is also a Co-Founder of Radianse, the real time location company, and served as the VP of R&D for that company. Prior to Radianse, he worked at Philips Medical where he was a business program manager for the cardiac resuscitation business - in this role he was responsible for leading the Marketing, Regulatory, Manufacturing, R&D, Quality and Finance teams around the ~$70M business focused primarily on defibrillators. Before this, he held various leadership positions in marketing and R&D for a diverse set of products which included physiological monitors, telemetry devices, telehealth, infusion pumps, and arrhythmia processing algorithms.

Josh Tolkoff

Josh has over thirty years of in-depth experience in research, development, manufacturing, regulatory affairs and general management of medical device companies. After a research engineer position at Mass General Hospital, Josh started his commercial career as the Vice President of Research and Development for Medi-Tech, which became Boston Scientific, and helped grow that company from 20 to 500 employees. Josh then went on to start two of his own companies, including ACT Medical, Inc., an outsourcing resource for medical device companies. He built ACT to over $25 million in sales and sold it to a publicly traded company in 2000. From 2000 to 2003, Josh served as a manager of Seedling Enterprises, an incubator created to find and develop early stage medical device concepts to a point of increased value. To date, Seedling has exited three of its investments at a significant gain and has spun off three additional projects as venture-financed companies.

Josh is recognized as a leading figure in the Massachusetts medical device community and currently serves on the board of several privately held companies, and chaired MassMedic, a 300+ industry trade group.

He received a BA from Harvard College and an MS in BioMechanics from MIT.

Joel Weinstein

Joel Weinstein is a serial entrepreneur and an industry-recognized marketing and strategy “guru” in medical imaging and women’s health. He was a member of the founding management team of Hologic, Inc. and directed the strategies of that company’s first 12 years of meteoric growth. He has since served as a Founder of Assurance Medical, CEO of VueSonix Sensors, Andrew Technologies and Chief Marketing and Sales Officer of women’s health pioneer BioSphere Medical. Since 2001, he has also served as Founder and President of MAVEN Medical Device Strategies – a firm that nurtures growth of early and growth stage medical device companies. Joel has also served as two-term member of the Board of Directors of MassMEDIC and has served on that organization’s FDA Working Group, Start-Up Working Group and Reimbursement Working Group.