Medical Engineering Distinguished Seminar

All too often, people are deterred from innovation and entrepreneurship because they do not believe they have the information, the expertise, or the resources to make their vision a reality. However, the path to becoming a successful entrepreneur and innovator is far more accessible and learnable than most people realize.  Over the past 15 years the Biodesign Innovation Program at Stanford University has pioneered a new approach to teaching innovation that has resulted in dozens of new start-ups and sparked similar training programs across the world.  One of the founders and architects of the program, Dr. Josh Makower, will describe the process in detail and explain how he's used it to launch several start-ups of his own.

Biography: Josh Makower, MD is a General Partner on NEA's healthcare team leading their medtech/healthtech practice. Josh is also the Founder and Executive Chairman of ExploraMed, a medical device incubator that has created 8 new medical technology companies over the past 20 years. Notable transactions from the ExploraMed portfolio include Acclarent, acquired by J&J in 2009. EndoMatrix, acquired by C.R. Bard in 1997 and TransVascular, acquired by Medtronic in 2003. On-going ExploraMed/NEA ventures include NeoTract, Moximed, Nuelle, and NC7. In addition to his role at NEA, Josh serves on the faculty of the Stanford University Medical School as a Consulting Professor of Medicine and is Co-Founder of Stanford's Biodesign Innovation Program. Josh currently serves on the board of directors for DOTS Devices, Eargo, ExploraMed, Intrinsic Therapeutics, NeoTract, Moximed, Nuelle, NC7 and Coravin. Josh holds over 300 patents and patent applications for various medical devices in the fields of cardiology, ENT, general surgery, drug delivery, obesity, orthopedics, women's health, and urology. He received an MBA from Columbia University, an MD from the NYU School of Medicine, and a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT.