David R. Walt is the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Bioinspired Engineering at Harvard Medical School, professor of pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Core Faculty Member of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, associate member at the Broad Institute, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor, and codirector of the Mass General Brigham Center for COVID Innovation. He is the scientific founder of Illumina Inc. and Quanterix Corp., and has cofounded multiple other life sciences startups including Ultivue, Inc., Arbor Biotechnologies, Sherlock Biosciences, Vizgen, Inc., and Torus Biosciences.

His numerous national and international awards and honors for his fundamental and applied work in the field of optical microwell arrays and single molecules include the 2021 Kabiller Prize in Nanoscience and Nanomedicine (2021), American Chemical Society Kathryn C. Hach Award for Entrepreneurial Success (2017), Ralph Adams Award in Bioanalytical Chemistry (2016), ACS Gustavus John Esselen Award (2014), Analytical Chemistry Spectrochemical Analysis Award (2013), Pittsburgh Analytical Chemistry Award (2013), and ACS National Award for Creative Invention (2010).

He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and US National Academy of Medicine; a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and National Academy of Inventors; and was inducted in the US National Inventors Hall of Fame.

He received his BS in chemistry from the University of Michigan and his PhD in chemical biology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Julio C. Palmaz, inventor of the first FDA-approved balloon-expandable vascular stent (1990), is Ashbel Smith Professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio and scientific advisor of Vactronix Scientific. The Palmaz stent is on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington. In 1994 he and Richard Schatz created a modified coronary stent—two Palmaz stents joined by a single connector—approved by the FDA as the first stent indicated for the treatment of failure of coronary balloon angioplasty. The Palmaz-Schatz stent became the gold standard for every subsequent stent submitted for FDA approval.

Dr. Palmaz was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2006) and National Academy of Inventors (2013) and selected for the Gold medal (2007) of the Society of Interventional Radiology. He is a Distinguished Scientist and fellow of the American Heart Association and fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering and Society of Interventional Radiology.

He has also received honorary recognitions from the Argentinian College of Cardiology, National University of La Plata, International Society of Endovascular Surgery, Society of Interventional Radiology, German Roentgen Society, San Antonio chapter of the AHA, Washington Cardiovascular Research Foundation, Society of Cardiac Angiography, Texas Heart Institute, Texas Bar Association, Surfaces in Biomaterials Foundation, and Cardiovascular Interventional Radiology Society of Europe. He has 60 patents and has authored over 35 books or book chapters and over 100 peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals.

Dr. Palmaz joined the University of Texas Health Sciences Department of Radiology in 1983 as chief of angiography and special procedures. He received his MD in 1971 at the National University of La Plata, Argentina, with radiology specialty training at the University of California, Davis and Martinez (CA) VA Medical Center.

Leonard Pinchuk is an inventor and entrepreneur in biomedical engineering, with 128 US patents and 90 publications. He has cofounded 10 companies where his major accomplishments include invention of the Nylon 12 angioplasty balloon, helical wire stent, modular stent-graft, a drug-eluting stent (TAXUS®), several biomaterials (Bionate and poly(styrene-block-isobutylene-block-styrene) [SIBS]), a novel glaucoma tube (the InnFocus MicroShunt®), and the next generation intraocular lens. He is also Distinguished Research Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Miami.

Dr. Pinchuk started his career at Cordis Corporation and left in 1987 to cofound Corvita Corporation (angioplasty catheters, stents, stent-grafts). Corvita was taken public (1994), acquired by Pfizer, Inc. (1996), and then sold to Boston Scientific Corporation (1998). Desiring to return to the startup setting, Dr. Pinchuk founded Innovia LLC (2002), incubating many companies in the fields of intraocular lenses, glaucoma shunts, radiation oncology, urology, gene therapy, and others. In 2016 Santen Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. acquired his current company, InnFocus, Inc., where he is now chief scientific officer.

Dr. Pinchuk’s awards include the 2017 Society for Biomaterials Innovation and Technology Award and the 2017 BioMed SA Award for Innovation in Healthcare and Bioscience. He was inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2007 and the National Academy of Engineering in 2012.

He was born and raised in Montreal and received his BSc in chemistry from McGill University (1976), PhD (interdisciplinary) in engineering and chemistry from the University of Miami (1984), and an honorary doctor of science degree from McGill University (2005).

Richard Schatz is research director of cardiovascular interventions at the Scripps Heart, Lung, and Vascular Center and director of gene and stem cell therapy. He is a recognized international expert in interventional cardiology and has published and lectured extensively. His seminal work in coronary stents spurred a revolution in the treatment of coronary artery disease—over 2 million of them are placed annually worldwide, with an immeasurable impact on relieving mortality and morbidity, improving patients’ lives, and reducing healthcare costs.  

Dr. Schatz served his internship and residency at Letterman Army Medical Center in San Francisco, forward by a fellowship at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, where he was, successively, director of the Cardiovascular Technologist School, Cardiology Clinic, Coronary Angioplasty, and Cardiac Catheterization Labs, before becoming assistant chief and then acting chief of cardiology.

He was also a clinical associate professor of medicine at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio, where he collaborated with Dr. Julio Palmaz to develop a novel approach to angioplasty, pioneering the field of vascular stents. In 1988 they received FDA approval to proceed with the first US protocol to study stents in the coronary circulation and in 1994 the FDA approved the Palmaz-Schatz stent, the first stent to reduce restenosis, heralding a new era in the treatment of coronary disease. With nearly 100 million patients treated worldwide the Palmaz-Schatz Stent is one of the top 10 medical device patents of the last 50 years.

His collaboration with the late Jeffrey Isner in angiogenesis, gene transfer, and stem cell therapy launched a new approach to relieving angina in patients with atherosclerosis and improving heart function after heart attacks.

Dr. Schatz has been honored with both the distinguished alumnus award and the Lifetime Scholar Award by Duke University Medical Center, and he is a distinguished fellow of the Hong Kong Cardiology Society as well as an elected fellow of the American College of Cardiology.

He attended the State University of New York at Buffalo and earned his MD from Duke Medical School, where his honors included the Davison Scholarship Award and Lange Medical Publication Award. He also studied at the Thorax center in Rotterdam and at Oxford University.

John Simpson has helped revolutionize the field of medicine through innovations that fundamentally altered how physicians treat cardiovascular disease. In 1981 he created a new catheter system for coronary angioplasty with an independently steerable guidewire in the central lumen of the balloon catheter, patented as the over-the-wire balloon angioplasty catheter. This contribution was essential in enabling selective catheterization of distal vessels and allowing treatment of previously inaccessible stenoses in tortuous vessels while preventing inappropriate entry into collateral branches.

He founded Avinger, Inc. in 2007 and served as its CEO and then executive chair before retiring in December 2017. He also started numerous other companies, including Advanced Cardiovascular Systems, Perclose, FoxHollow Technologies, and Devices for Vascular Intervention. He now focuses his efforts on the treatment of vascular disease through the development of new technologies combined with a new approach to optical imaging.

He is a member of the American College of Physicians and fellow in the American College of Cardiology, and has published on a variety of medical subjects and lectured extensively throughout the world.

Dr. Simpson received his MS and PhD in biomedical sciences from the University of Texas and his MD from Duke University, and completed his fellowship in interventional cardiology at Stanford University.

Paul Yock is the Martha Meier Weiland Professor of Medicine and founding cochair of Stanford’s Department of Bioengineering, with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He is also founder and director of the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign. He has authored over 300 peer-reviewed publications, chapters, and editorials, two textbooks, and over 50 US patents.

Dr. Yock is internationally known for his work in inventing, developing, and testing new devices, including the Rapid Exchange™ stenting and balloon angioplasty system, which is now the primary system in use worldwide. He also invented the fundamental approach to intravascular ultrasound imaging and founded Cardiovascular Imaging Systems (CVIS), later acquired by Boston Scientific.

Recent honors include the Transcatheter Therapeutics (TCT) Career Achievement Award, the American College of Cardiology Distinguished Scientist Award, and the National Academy of Engineering’s 2018 Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education.

He began his faculty career as an interventional cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco and then moved to Stanford in 1994. After completing his undergraduate and graduate studies at Amherst College and Oxford, respectively, he received his MD from Harvard Medical School followed by internship and residency training at UCSF and a fellowship in cardiology at Stanford.

Adolf Fercher chaired the Institute of Medical Physics at the Medical University of Vienna (1986–2008) and is now professor emeritus.

He pioneered ophthalmic interferometry, demonstrating the first measurement of the axial length of a human eye using low-coherence interferometry (LCI; 1986) and one of the first retinal OCT images of the living human eye (1993), and he is the intellectual father of the first commercial LCI ocular biometry system. In 1995 Dr. Fercher demonstrated, together with Christoph K. Hitzenberger, the first application of spectral domain (SD) LCI to intraocular ranging, enabling rapid 3D OCT imaging and modern OCT technology.

Dr. Fercher is the author or coauthor of some 125 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals. He studied physics at Vienna University of Technology and received his PhD in 1972. In 1968–1975 he was junior scientist at Carl Zeiss AG, where he worked on optical testing with computer holograms and in holographic interferometry. In 1975–1986 he was professor at the University of Essen, where he conducted research on laser speckle and biomedical applications of interferometry.

James Fujimoto is Elihu Thomson Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a visiting professor of ophthalmology at Tufts University School of Medicine, and an adjunct professor at the Medical University of Vienna. His group and collaborators were responsible for the invention and development of optical coherence tomography (OCT). Their paper, “Optical Coherence Tomography,” published in Science in 1991, remains one of the most cited papers in the biophotonics field. Working with Carmen Puliafito and Eric Swanson, he was a cofounder of the startup company Advanced Ophthalmic Devices, which developed OCT for ophthalmic imaging and was acquired by Carl Zeiss. He also cofounded, with Eric Swanson and Mark Brezinski, LightLab Imaging, which developed cardiovascular OCT and was acquired by Goodman, Ltd. and St. Jude Medical.

In addition to publishing over 450 peer-reviewed journal articles and coediting 13 books, Dr. Fujimoto is an influential educator—numerous researchers who trained in his group are now leaders in photonics and biophotonics. He is also active in scientific service. He is a director of the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE), has been general cochair of the SPIE BIOS symposium since 2003, and was program and general cochair for the 2002 and 2004 Conferences on Lasers and Electro Optics (CLEO), cochair of the 2005 European Conferences on Biomedical Optics, and director of the Optical Society of America from 2000 to 2003.

He received the Zeiss Research Award in 2011, the IEEE Photonics Award in 2014, and the Optical Society of America Ives Medal in 2015. He is a co-recipient of the 2002 Rank Prize in Optoelectronics and 2012 António Champalimaud Vision Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Sciences, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has an honorary doctorate from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland. He received his SB, SM, and PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT in 1979, 1981, and 1984.

Christoph Hitzenberger is vice chair of the Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering at the Medical University of Vienna. He joined the Institute of Medical Physics at the University of Vienna in 1987 as an assistant professor and, with the new head of the department, Adolf F. Fercher, founded the biomedical optics research group. During their pioneering work on low-coherence intraocular ranging, Dr. Hitzenberger developed the first heterodyne low-coherence interferometry (LCI) system for measuring intraocular distances (axial eye length, retinal thickness), presented in 1990. This work led to the development of the first commercial LCI ocular biometry system that is now standard technology in eye clinics worldwide and has been successfully used for intraocular lens adaptation in millions of cataract patients. The technology was expanded to record optical coherence tomography (OCT) images, yielding one of the first in vivo retinal OCT images of the human eye.

In 1995 Dr. Hitzenberger demonstrated, in cooperation with Dr. Fercher, the first application of spectral domain (SD) LCI to intraocular ranging. The huge sensitivity advantage of SD LCI/OCT over the earlier time domain technology led to a paradigm shift in OCT technology and enabled rapid 3D imaging. SD OCT has revolutionized retinal diagnostics and is now the industry standard for retinal OCT, with tens of thousands of SD OCT retinal scanners in use worldwide.

Dr. Hitzenberger received the award of the Hoechst Foundation for Advancement of Medical Research in Austria and is a fellow of the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) and the Optical Society (OSA). In addition to serving as editor in chief of the OSA journal Biomedical Optics Express , he is the author or coauthor of some 150 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals, with a total of nearly 20,000 citations (Google Scholar).

He studied physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna and received his PhD in 1983. He earned his habilitation in medical physics 1993.

David Huang is the Peterson Professor of Ophthalmology, professor of biomedical engineering, and director of the Center for Ophthalmic Optics and Lasers in the Casey Eye Institute at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.

He co-invented optical coherence tomography (OCT) in 1991 when he was an MD/PhD student at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This novel imaging technology has micron-level resolution in all 3 dimensions and is able to resolve cell-sized microstructures in the retina and other fine layered structures of the eye. It is indispensable in the diagnosis and management of many eye diseases and has become the most commonly used imaging modality in ophthalmology, with an estimated 30 million people scanned every year worldwide. He has made further contributions to various aspects of OCT technology, including polarization-sensitive OCT, swept-source OCT, anterior eye OCT, OCT angiography, and spectroscopic OCT of nanoparticle-labeled cells.

Dr. Huang leads the Center for Ophthalmic Optic and Lasers ( www.COOLLab.net ), which conducts NIH-supported basic, translational, and clinical research on OCT and OCT angiography in retinal diseases, anterior eye disease, glaucoma, and other optic nerve diseases. He is also an inventor of laser therapeutic devices and mobile diagnostic technology, and a founder of Gobiquity Mobile Health ( www.gobiquity.com ), a maker of mobile diagnostic apps for both professional and home use.

For his research and teaching on OCT, Dr. Huang shared the 2012 António Champalimaud Vision Award and received the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology’s Jonas Friedenwald Award (2013) and the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s Senior Achievement Award (2011). He is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.

Michael M. Merzenich is the Francis Sooy Professor (emeritus) at the University of California, San Francisco, and a founding scientist at Scientific Learning, Posit Science, and the Brain Plasticity Institute.

Merzenich led a research team that conducted extensive, original research important for the development and application of multiple-channel cochlear implants, which ultimately provided the bases for a commercial cochlear implant (Advanced Bionics’ Symbion). In 1996 he cofounded Scientific Learning, a company dedicated to delivering remedial therapies to address language, reading, attention, and cognitive impairments in school-age children. Its programs have been applied to help more than 5 million children. In 2002 he cofounded Posit Science, which produces and delivers computer-based programs to help aging, psychiatrically impaired, and brain-injured populations.

In 2009 Merzenich and his colleagues founded the Brain Plasticity Institute, a research company (later integrated back into Posit Science) that has focused on developing new treatment strategies for children and adults with severe neurological impairments. Current targets are schizophrenia prevention/treatment; major depressive and bipolar disorders; resilience training to delay the onset of schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s; “chemobrain”; brain infections; autistic spectrum disorders; ADHD and conduct disorders; childhood abuse syndromes; substance abuse disorders; hemispatial neglect syndrome; aphasias; and acquired movement disorders.

His research interests have included the functional organization of the somatosensory and auditory nervous systems; the neurological bases of—and rules governing—learning-induced cortical plasticity; and the neurological origins of and remediation of developmental and acquired impairments in language, reading, memory, attention, cognitive control, and movement. His research teams have extensively modeled changes induced in the brain (a) following brain injury and stroke; (b) resulting from distorted experiential history leading to acquired impairments, psychotic illness, and addiction; and (c) contributing to pathological neurological regression in aging. All have been studied as platforms for developing brain plasticity–based medical therapeutics to treat those conditions in human populations.

Merzenich earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Portland and his PhD at Johns Hopkins. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1999 and the Institute of Medicine in 2010.

R. Srinivasan came to the United States from India in 1953 for his graduate work in Chemistry. He got his Ph. D. under Sidney Benson, the well-known chemical kineticist. His thesis was on protein chemistry which served him well thirty years later in the work that has resulted in the Russ prize.

After several years of post-doctoral work at Caltech and at the University of Rochester, Srinivasan joined the IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY in 1961. For the next thirty years he investigated the action of ultraviolet photons on organic molecules. His research extended from the photochemistry of small organic molecules such as 1,3 –butadiene to synthetic organic polymers which were used as photoresists in the manufacture of computer chips. In 1980, when pulsed, ultraviolet(UV) lasers became commercially available, he switched his studies to the action of nanosecond UV pulses on organic solids. He discovered the phenomenon of “Ablative Photodecomposition (APD)” in synthetic organic polymers in 1979 and extended it to biological tissue in 1981. APD is currently used in the packaging of electronic chips and in the manufacture of ink-jet printers.

Srinivasan and his co-worker, James Wynne, collaborated extensively with surgeons from 1983 to 1991 to find potential applications of APD in surgery. The one field where the invention has succeeded impressively is in the re-shaping of the human cornea in the eye to correct for problems in vision such as myopia (short-sight), hyperopia (long-sight) and astigmatism. This discovery has led to the award of the Russ Prize for 2013 to Srinivasan, Wynne and Samuel Blum.

Srinivasan retired from IBM in 1990. He is currently the President of UVTech Associates, a consulting company.

Leroy E. Hood received an M.D. from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology, where he was a faculty member for 22 years. Dr. Hood’s research initially focused on fundamental biology (immunity, evolution, genomics, and neurobiology) and on bringing engineering and biology together through the development of five instruments—a DNA sequencer, a DNA synthesizer, a protein sequencer, a peptide synthesizer, and an ink jet printer for DNA arrays—all of which have since been commercialized (Applied Biosystems and Agilent).

In the 1980s, he began to focus more on cross-disciplinary biology and systems biology. In 1992, with support from Bill Gates, he moved to the University of Washington, where he was the founder and chairman of the Molecular Biotechnology Department (the first cross-disciplinary biology department). In 2000, he co-founded, and is still president of, the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Washington, an independent, nonprofit organization that develops strategies and technologies for systems approaches to biology and medicine.

Dr. Hood is currently pioneering the transition of medical care from a reactive to a proactive (P4) approach based on predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory views of individual patients and systems approaches to diagnostics and therapeutics as well as the development of a myriad of new clinical assays for explorations of new dimensions of patient data space.

Dr. Hood was awarded the Lasker Prize in 1987 (for studies of the mechanism of immune diversity); the 2002 Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology (for developing automated technologies for analyzing proteins and genes); the 2003 Lemelson–MIT Prize for Innovation and Invention (for the development of the DNA sequencer); the 2006 Heinz Award in Technology, the Economy and Employment (for breakthroughs in biomedical science on the genetic level); membership in the 2007 Inventors Hall of Fame (for the automated DNA sequencer); the 2008 Pittcon Heritage Award (for helping to transform the biotechnology industry); and the 2010 Kistler Award (for contributions to genetics that have benefitted mankind). Dr. Hood has received 17 honorary degrees from institutions such as Johns Hopkins, Yale and UCLA.

He has published more than 700 peer-reviewed papers, received 22 patents, and co-authored textbooks in biochemistry, immunology, molecular biology, and genetics. In addition, he co-authored, with Dan Keveles, The Code of Codes , a popular book on the sequencing of the human genome. 

Dr. Hood is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Association of Arts and Sciences, as well as the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), Institute of Medicine, and National Academy of Engineering. Indeed, he is one of only 7 scientists (of more than 6,000 members of The National Academies) elected to all three academies. Dr. Hood has been instrumental in founding 13 biotechnology companies, including Amgen, Applied Biosystems, Systemix, Darwin, Rosetta, Integrated Diagnostics, and the Accelerator.

Elmer L. Gaden is Wills Johnson Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering at the University of Virginia. A teacher of chemical engineering for more than 50 years, 25 of them at his alma mater, Columbia University, Dr. Gaden's central interest has been the engineering aspects of microbial processes for manufacturing chemical and pharmaceutical products ~ "biochemical engineering". A 1971 article in the American Chemical Society's Chemical and Engineering News' "Chemical Innovators" series named him "Father of Biochemical Engineering". He was the founding editor and, for 25years Editor, of the international research journal, Biotechnology and Bioengineering.

After WWII service as electronics officer on an escort aircraft camer in the Pacific, Dr. Gaden returned to Columbia for graduate study, receiving the PhD in 1949. Following this he worked in research and development for Chas. Pfizer & Co. in Brooklyn, N. Y. (now Pfizer Inc., Groton, C1.) before returning to Columbia to teach.

Dr. Gaden is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and was for several years on the National Research Council's Board of Science and Technology for International Development. During this period he led technical missions to Indonesia, Ethiopia, Portugal, Japan, and China, and also taught at the East China University of Science and Technology (Shanghai) and at the Universidad Nacional de Mexico.

Dr. Gaden is a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and has received the Institute's "Founders Award", Columbia University's Egleston Medal for "distinguished engineering achievement", and an honorary doctorate from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. On his retirement from the University of Virginia (1994) he was recognized with a special symposium by the American Chemical Society's Biotechnology Division and received its Marvin Johnson Award. Especially dear to him are Columbia's "Great Teacher's Award" and the "Mac Wade Award" from the students of Virginia's School of Engineering and Applied Science for service to the School and its students.

In 1949, Earl Bakken co-founded Medtronic, one of the world's leading developers and manufacturers of therapeutic medical devices, including the implantable pacemaker, as a partnership with the late Palmer J. Hermundslie. Mr. Bakken was Medtronic's chief executive officer and chairman of the board from the company's incorporation in 1957 until 1976. He was senior chairman of the board until his retirement as an officer of Medtronic in April 1989. Mr. Bakken remains active in Medtronic.

Mr. Bakken developed the first wearable, external, battery-powered, transistorized pacemaker in 1957 for Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, a University of Minnesota heart surgeon. Today, more than 400,000 pacemakers are implanted annually, extending and enhancing the quality of life of patients. Sales of pacemaker implantable devices exceed $5 billion per year with the United States as the leader in sales.

In retirement, Mr. Bakken, has headed the board of directors of the Five Mountain Medical Community in the development of the North Hawaii Community Hospital. The center will emphasize a balance of technology and the human touch to provide patient-centered, cost efficient health care.

Earl Bakken served in the U.S. Air Force as a radar maintenance instructor until 1946 when he enrolled at the University of Minnesota. After earning a bachelor of science in electrical engineering in 1948, he studied electrical engineering with a minor in mathematics at the University of Minnesota Graduate School. Born in 1924 in Minneapolis, Minn., Mr. Bakken currently resides in Waikoloa, Hawaii, with his wife, Doris.