About illumiSonics
ILLUMISONICS IS A COMPANY BASED ON NEW PHYSICS (PARS®) TO ILLUMINATE DEEP DATA
Our proprietary PARS® (Photon Absorption Remote Sensing) technology is a revolution in optical imaging.
Our company is developing and plans to commercialize its PARS® advanced optical imaging systems for a wide range of pre-clinical and clinical applications.
Our proprietary PARS® (Photon Absorption Remote Sensing) technology is a revolution in optical imaging.
Our company is developing and plans to commercialize its PARS® advanced optical imaging systems for a wide range of pre-clinical and clinical applications.
Experienced Leadership
DR. JOHN MACKEY, MD.
CEO & CMO Dr. Mackey is a medical oncologist and Professor Emeritus of Oncology at the University of Alberta. In addition to acting as director and clinical advisor to illumiSonics, Dr Mackey brings deep MedTech commercialization experience. He co-founded Pacylex Pharmaceuticals, J2 Endeavours, and SMHeartCard Inc. As Chair of the Alberta Pre-Phase I Program steering committee, he has a highly skilled team committed to bringing new anticancer therapies into clinical testing (www.prephaseone.com). Dr. Mackey has authored or co-authored more than 300 biomedical peer-reviewed publications.
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DR. PARSIN HAJI REZA, PhD.
CTO Dr. Reza discovered and pioneered the PARS® imaging techniques. In November 2014, he co-founded illumiSonics inc., holding the position of CEO from 2014 to 2018 and the chairman from 2014 to 2023. Dr. Reza is an award winning professor at the University of Waterloo and leads a large team of technical experts at PhotoMedicine Labs. He brings more than 12 years experience in optics and biomedical engineering, and continues to advance the validation of PARS® through these efforts. He currently has 35+ peer reviewed journal papers in optics and biomedical Engineering. He also holds 12+ family of patents regarding PARS® technology. Dr. Reza has been recognized for his innovative scientific contributions to advancing the state of optical imaging.
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GLEN MACKEY
CFO Mr. Mackey is a highly accomplished corporate executive with extensive experience in marketing, trading, analytical, compliance, and financial management within commodity marketing and financial institution sectors. Mackey is currently Chairman of the board of VRP Farms Ltd., and previously served as Chief Risk and Procurement Officer at NRG Energy, Inc. where he oversaw all retail brand costing and structuring, cash management, insurance, procurement, and risk management activities within the NRG portfolio of companies. He has also held leadership positions at Nexen Inc., EnCana Midstream and Marketing, Duke Energy/Westcoast Energy/Engage Energy, and TD Bank Financial Group. Mackey is an advisory board member at Rutgers University, Mathematical Finance, and a member of the Market Risk Advisory Committee of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. He has also served as a member of the board of directors of GenOn Energy, Inc., Mirant Novatas Corporation, and several other companies.
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Management
MIKE BISHOP
Director, Product Dev. and Hardware Architecture
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KRISTOF SUBRYAN
Director, Software Architecture Kristof Subryan worked as a software professional in robotics research, medical imaging, education and developing commercial software for some of the big computer companies. He worked 16 years at Apple where, amongst other projects, he managed development of Aperture, software for professional photographers. Prior to Apple he worked for Sun Microsystems where he managed number of large infrastructure projects supporting Sun’s business as well as projects powering large telecom companies. He holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Computer Science from University of Manitoba.
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JILL STEFANELLI, PHD
Advisory Board Member and Consultant in Digital and Molecular Pathology |
DEEPAK DINAKARAN, MD.
Director Molecular Imaging |
Dr. Stefanelli brings over 20 years of experience in pathology and molecular
diagnostics to the illumiSonics team. A pioneer in precision medicine, she has held positions as President and Chief Business Officer at Paige, where her business leadership was central to the company’s corporate strategy and strong commercial growth. In this role, Jill oversaw strategic partnerships with life science companies and the biomarker development strategy with pharmaceutical partners. Prior to this, she served as Senior Vice President of Partnerships at Invitae, by way of the ArcherDX acquisition, where she led global Companion Diagnostic partnerships with pharmaceutical companies to improve cancer diagnosis and treatment. Previously,she established the first Companion Diagnostic program for the OncomineDX assay at Thermo Fisher Scientific and held roles at Pacific Biosciences, Roche Diagnostics, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Foreign Animal Disease Laboratory at Plum Island New York. |
Dr. Dinakaran is a radiation oncologist and clinician scientist in Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center / Sunnybrook Research Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada. He completed his BSc(Hons) at the University of Toronto, MD,CM at McGill University, MEd from the University of British Columbia, PhD from the University of Alberta, and postgraduate training in National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD, USA. His basic science and translational research focus has been on biophotonics systems in radiation & drug combinations, novel nanoparticle-based therapeutics, and understanding radiotherapy-drug interactions using biomarker analysis. His clinical research has focused on augmenting checkpoint inhibitors through immunopriming radiation, and improving toxicity predictors via advanced dosimetric analysis. Dr. Dinakaran has notably pioneered a new therapeutic strategy using radiation-activated photodynamic therapy (radioPDT) nanoparticles by bringing together a multidisciplinary team spanning chemical engineers to radiation oncologists, and led the project to a technology patent, industry licensing partnership and CIHR funding for preclinical development. He has won multiple awards for his research work from national and international associations. He also is a co-investigator on multiple Phase I/II clinical trials in partnership with EMD Serono, AstraZeneca, Ontario Cancer Research Institute and Alberta Cancer Foundation. Dr. Dinakaran has authored 20+ research publications, abstracts and book chapters.
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Board of Directors
STEVEN BASTA
Chairman Mr. Basta is a Senior Executive with broad experience leading biopharma and medical technology companies. Demonstrated success launching and scaling commercial life science products and leading product development. Over the past 25 years, Steve has led multiple life science companies developing and commercializing biopharma and medical device technologies. Steve currently serves as CEO of Sanotize, a Vancouver-based pharmaceutical and medical device company, and as a director of VYNE Therapeutics and Dermbiont. Steve has successfully led two companies through Initial Public Offerings and has led multiple partnerships, private financings, mergers and licensing collaborations. Steve served as CEO of BioForm Medical through product development, initial commercial launch and scale up of a leading injectable aesthetics business, making it a worldwide leader in the dermal filler space, and ultimately a leader broadly in medical aesthetics. Steve led AlterG in establishing the AlterG anti-gravity treadmill as a core tool in physical therapy rehab for orthopedic and neurologic injury. Steve holds a BA in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins and an MBA from Kellogg.
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JOHN MACKEY, MD.
CEO & CMO Dr. Mackey is a medical oncologist and Professor Emeritus of Oncology at the University of Alberta. In addition to acting as director and clinical advisor to illumiSonics, Dr Mackey brings deep MedTech commercialization experience. He co-founded Pacylex Pharmaceuticals, J2 Endeavours, and SMHeartCard Inc. As Chair of the Alberta Pre-Phase I Program steering committee, he has a highly skilled team committed to bringing new anticancer therapies into clinical testing (www.prephaseone.com). Dr. Mackey has authored or co-authored more than 300 biomedical peer-reviewed publications.
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PARSIN HAJI REZA, PhD.
Founder & CTO Dr. Reza discovered and pioneered the PARS® imaging techniques. In November 2014, he co-founded illumiSonics inc., holding the position of CEO from 2014 to 2018 and the chairman from 2014 to 2023. Dr. Reza is an award winning professor at the University of Waterloo and leads a large team of technical experts at PhotoMedicine Labs. He brings more than 12 years experience in optics and biomedical engineering, and continues to advance the validation of PARS® through these efforts. He currently has 35+ peer reviewed journal papers in optics and biomedical Engineering. He also holds 12+ family of patents regarding PARS® technology. Dr. Reza has been recognized for his innovative scientific contributions to advancing the state of optical imaging.
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GLEN MACKEY
Mr. Mackey is a highly accomplished corporate executive with extensive experience in marketing, trading, analytical, compliance, and financial management within commodity marketing and financial institution sectors. Mackey is currently Chairman of the board of VRP Farms Ltd., and previously served as Chief Risk and Procurement Officer at NRG Energy, Inc. where he oversaw all retail brand costing and structuring, cash management, insurance, procurement, and risk management activities within the NRG portfolio of companies. He has also held leadership positions at Nexen Inc., EnCana Midstream and Marketing, Duke Energy/Westcoast Energy/Engage Energy, and TD Bank Financial Group. Mackey is an advisory board member at Rutgers University, Mathematical Finance, and a member of the Market Risk Advisory Committee of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. He has also served as a member of the board of directors of GenOn Energy, Inc., Mirant Novatas Corporation, and several other companies.
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BRUCE JOHNSON
Mr. Johnson has been the Chief Executive of a number of companies primarily in the technology sector. He was the co-founder and CEO of Intuit Canada and UK and grew that organization to 700 staff and revenues of around $115M. He currently is active in coaching entrepreneurs and sits on a number of boards including HeadCount Corporation, Vertical City Inc., Rehabtronics Inc., and the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute.
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KEVIN FAHEY, PhD.
Dr. Fahey has held executive positions in both large and small companies, and in all cases has driven dramatic growth time and time again. At Xradia (acquired by ZEISS) and FEI (acquired by ThermoFisher), Dr. Fahey grew the business over 4X within 4 years by restructuring their existing products, solutions and operations. He drove entry into new markets, and implemented efficient sales, marketing, and management systems that enabled the businesses to scale into the future. Dr. Fahey grew startup businesses from pre-revenue to commercialization at ESI, Metrosol, and OptoAtmospherics, including landing large B2B customers. Dr. Fahey successfully pivoted ESI, KMLabs, ZEISS into new markets, creating new business lines and implementing integrated sales and marketing channels that drove rapid increases in sales. Dr. Fahey holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford University and a B.S. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Our Development and Technology Partners
PHOTOMEDICINE LABS
The PhotoMedicine Labs (PML) is a research group in the Department of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Professor Parsin Haji Reza founded PML in September 2018, with the vision of growing it to become a major hub within the fields of biomedical optics and optical imaging. PML is composed of talented graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, scientists, engineers, and clinicians, all working to design and develop innovative medical imaging techniques in the field of digital pathology, oncology, pre-clinical research, drug discovery, and ophthalmology. » PhotoMedicine Labs |