Board of Directors
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DR. PARSIN HAJI REZA, PHD.
Founder, CTO & Chairman
Dr. Reza discovered and pioneered the PARS® imaging techniques. In November 2014, he co-founded illumiSonics inc., holding the position of CEO from November 2014 to March 2018. Dr. Reza is an award winning professor at the University of Waterloo and leads a team of technical experts at PhotoMedicine Labs. He brings more than 10 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 7 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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DR. JOHN MACKEY, MD.
Director & CMO
Dr. Mackey is a medical oncologist and Director of Clinical Trials Unit at the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton, Canada, and a Professor of Oncology at the University of Alberta. In addition to acting as director and lead 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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BRUCE JOHNSON, BSC.
Director
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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DR. KEVIN FAHEY, PHD.
Director
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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Experienced Leadership
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ROCKY GANSKE
President & CEO
Mr. Ganske brings over 3 decades of both public and private company experience in the medical devices, diagnostics, and life science fields, and has a broad background in management, operations, science and regulatory; blended with the disciplines of corporate processes, and successful entrepreneurial business ventures. Mr. Ganske has personally led multiple business and IP transactions with both Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies. He led CellAegis Devices Inc. as the CEO for the last 10 years transitioned the technology out of Sick Kids Hospital, Toronto into a commercial product with CE Mark and Health Canada approval used in several multinational controlled trials, in cardiovascular, stroke, and kidney reperfusion damage. Prior to CDI, Mr. Ganske served as CEO of Axela, a university diagnostics startup focused on real-time proteomic analysis utilizing proprietary diffractive optics technology. Mr. Ganske transitioned Axela to a full operating company, installing Axela’s commercial platform in premier institutes in the US, EU and Asia Pacific. Mr. Ganske was instrumental in negotiating and closing significant patent in-licensing transaction with Fortune 100 companies for over 150 patents and applications and oversaw Axela’s acquisition of Xceed Molecular, a genomics diagnostic company.
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DR. JOHN MACKEY, MD.
CMO
Dr. Mackey is a medical oncologist and Director of Clinical Trials Unit at the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton, Canada, and a Professor of Oncology at the University of Alberta. In addition to acting as director and lead clinical advisor to illumiSonics, Dr Mackey brings deep medtech commerciali-zation 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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JOCHEN SCHWEIZER
COO
Jochen Schweizer joined us from Danaher, where he was Head of Microsurgery at the Business Unit Medical of Leica Microsystems. In this role, he was responsible for the Medical Strategy, the Portfolio Management and Clinical Applications. From 2012 to 2020 Jochen worked at ZEISS Microscopy in leadership positions in China and Germany, driving the development of products and solutions in Light Microscopy. Before, Jochen worked in the machine vision industry at the Fraunhofer Institute, Stemmer Imaging and SVS-Vistek. Jochen brings 10+ years of international leadership experience - managing complex, international multi-stakeholder projects. He is experienced in Product Management and Product Development in Medical, Life Sciences and Digital Imaging.
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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 November 2014 to March 2018. Dr. Reza is an award winning professor at the University of Waterloo and leads a team of technical experts at PhotoMedicine Labs. He brings more than 10 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 7 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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Management
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ANNE RAGHURAI
Interim CFO
Prior to joining illumiSonics, Anne, a CPA, and through her accounting practice of 23 years, worked with small to mid-sized companies in various industries assisting in growth positioning, funding and operations. In addition, she provides CFO services to larger firms as a spinoff from her days of employment with a number of companies in the private and public sectors.
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VLADIMIR PEKAR
Director Software and AI
Vladimir Pekar received a Diploma in Computer Science from Taganrog Radio Engineering Institute in Russia and a PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of Hamburg, Germany. He started his career at Philips Research in Hamburg, working on medical analysis applications, and subsequently held different positions at Philips in Germany and Canada, where he managed academic research collaborations until 2018. Vladimir is joining the team from Perimeter Medical Imaging AI, where as AI Lead he played a pivotal role in development of its proprietary AI technology for OCT image analysis.
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MIKE BISHOP
Director, Product Dev. and Hardware Architecture
Mike Bishop worked 10 years at Apple and was most recently Engineering Manager in hardware technologies, where he managed a team of engineers and led a cross disciplinary research team in the design and prototyping of biophotonic based hardware systems. Prior to joining Apple, Mike was in the Product Development Group at Christie Digital and was a key member of the technical team responsible for designing, prototyping, and launching the first high power RGB laser based cinema projector. Mike holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from University of Waterloo as well as a MBA from Wilfrid Laurier University. He holds numerous patents in the fields of nanotechnology, optical sensor design, optomechanical design, and thermal architectures.
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DEEPAK DINAKARAN
Director Molecular Imaging
Dr. Dinakaran is a radiation oncology resident physician at the University of Alberta. He completed his BSc(Hons) in University of Toronto, MD,CM in McGill University, MEd from University of British Columbia and PhD in University of Alberta. 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 the Canadian Urologic Association (CUA), Canadian Association of Radiation Oncology (CARO) and Cancer Research Institute of Alberta (CRINA). 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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ALEXIS MOTUZ
Manager, Corporate Communications
Alexis Motuz is a technical writer with an interdisciplinary background (arts, sciences, and fine arts with a specialization in creative writing; BASc, MA); she is currently completing her SSHRC-funded PhD in English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. She has worked for nearly 15 years in post-secondary institutions across Southern Ontario supporting faculty, students, and staff as they work to improve their research and writing & multimodal communication skills. She has worked with students at all levels (undergraduate, graduate) and with a range of abilities to guide them as they craft award-winning scholarship and successful professional school applications. She has edited and developed successful grant applications for federal, provincial, municipal, and non-profit funding agencies, and very much enjoyed learning about, translating, and presenting cutting-edge innovations in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and fine arts disciplines to both expert and more general audiences.
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