Keynote Speaker
Alfred Cuschieri
Professor Sir Alfred Cuschieri Chief Scientific Officer, Institute for Medical Science and Technology, University of Dundee, Scotland, UK
Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, Gold Medal
Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
Professor Sir Alfred Cuschieri has published 530 Original papers in peer reviewed journal, 106 Reviews and Chapters, 23 Books and monographs.
Arthur Erdman
Director on the Medical Devices Center, University of Minnesota
Arthur G. Erdman, P.E., is the Richard C. Jordan Professor and a Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota, specializing in mechanical design, bioengineering and product design. In July 2007 he was selected as the Director of the Medical Devices Center at the U of M and is also the Co-Editor of the ASME Journal of Medical Devices.
He received his BS degree at Rutgers University, his MS and Ph.D. at RPI. Dr. Erdman has published over 370 technical papers, 3 books, holds 35 patents (plus 10 pending), and shares with his former students 9 Best Paper Awards at international conferences. Dr. Erdman has had research collaborations with numerous health sciences faculty including those in Ophthalmology, Neuroscience, Epidemiology, Cardiology, Urology, Orthopedics, Surgery, Dentistry, Otolaryngology, Veterinary Medicine and Sports Biomechanics.
He has consulted at over 50 companies in mechanical, biomedical and product design, including Xerox, 3M, Andersen Windows, Proctor and Gamble, HP, Rollerblade, Sulzer Medica, St. Jude Medical and Yamaha.
George Hanna
Professor, Imperial College London
George Hanna is Head of the Division of Surgery, Imperial College London, and Chair of the Oesophago-gastric Cancer Pathway for the London Cancer Alliance. He is General Secretary of the European Association for Endoscopic Surgery. Research Director for the Association of Laparoscopic Surgeons, UK, and Director of the NIHR Diagnostic Evidence Cooperative London. His research interest is surgical technology, gastroesophageal cancer and point of care diagnositcs.
Hak-Kim Chan
Hak-Kim Chan, Professor in Pharmaceutics is leading the Advanced Drug Delivery Group at the Faculty of Pharmacy.
Professor Chan is a world leader in respiratory drug delivery. Over a decade since joining the University of Sydney, he has developed a leading research program on aerosol drug delivery, ranging from in vitro, ranging from powder production by novel processes, particle engineering and aerosol formulation, to scintigraphic imaging of lung deposition and clinical outcome.
He played a pivotal role in the development of Aridol™ (inhaled mannitol for diagnosis of asthma), which was approved by the FDA in the United States, 14 European Union countries, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. He has more than 280 scientific publications on pharmaceutical formulation and drug delivery (including 175 original research papers, 45 book chapters and reviews and 40 full-length conference articles, with over 5,000 citations and H-index of 38) and holds seven patents in these areas.
Professor Chan is an executive editor of Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews and on the editorial advisory boards of various pharmaceutical journals, including Pharmaceutical Research and International Journal of Pharmaceutics. He was appointed to the Subcommittee on Pharmaceutical Aerosol Standards for the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration in 1996–97, and served as a member (2007–08) on the in vitro – in vivo correlation subgroup of the International Pharmaceutical Aerosol Consortium on Regulation and Science in Washington DC. He is a Fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS), Fellow of Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI), Chair of the NSW Pharmaceutical Science Group of the RACI, and Vice President of the Asian Federation for Pharmaceutical Sciences.
Izumi Shin-Ichi
Dean, Professor, Tohoku University Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering
Japanese Association of Rehabilitation Medicine (1983-present)
Councilor (1999-present)
Trustee (2008-present)
Vice President of the board of trustees (2012-present)
Trustee, Japanese Society for Neural Repair and Neurorehabilitation (2010-present)
Council, Japanese Society for Medical and Biological Engineering (2013-present)
Corresponding Member, American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (2007-present)
John Abele
John is the retired Founding Chairman of Boston Scientific Corporation and an early pioneer in the then (1970s) counter-intuitive concept of less invasive surgery. He holds numerous patents and has published and lectured extensively on the many different disruptive technologies of various medical devices and on the technical, educational, social, economic, and political factors influencing their acceptance into global clinical practice.
He is a Fellow in both the Society of Interventional Radiology and the American Institute for Medical and Biomedical Engineering, and received honorary Doctoral degrees from Northeastern University, Wentworth Institute of Technology and Amherst College and many other awards. He is Founding Chairman of the Argosy Foundation.
In 2006, he was ranked #258 by Forbes Magazine's list of "The World's Richest People," with an estimated net worth of $2.7 billion. In 2005 he was ranked #132 by Forbes Magazine's list of "The World's Richest People," with an estimated net worth of $4 billion.
Paul Wetter
"The single individual who has done the most to promote education and understanding of Minimally Invasive Surgery worldwide."
As one of the first surgeons to champion advanced laparoscopic surgery, he is a social and education entrepreneur and innovator. Dr. Wetter brought together multiple surgical specialties to start a new type of medical multi-specialty society, the Society of Laparoendoscopic Surgeons, which has become the largest of its kind in the world with over 6,000 active members. He established the AsianAmerican and EuroAmerican MIS Summits, through which he has put high-quality educational and resource materials into the hands of all surgeons and hospitals worldwide. He is the co-founder of Medical Journal, JSLS, which has had a meteoric rise to the top 100 journals of over 10,000 scientific publications online, and spearheaded the publication of the first of their kind open-access, online medical textbooks, which can be used at the bedside, in the office, library, and OR and have built-in language translation for worldwide utilization. He is also founder of ORReady, the world initiative to improve surgical outcomes., www.ORReady.org which has 21 organizations of Five continents participating. Dr. Wetter has received honors in many countries for his sharing of ideas about MIS around the world, which influenced the rapid rise of MIS. The driving source for his work is the lofty goal of giving every budding and experienced practitioner in the world an opportunity to contribute and learn. Dr. Wetter truly has mastered the art of collaboration and Open Access in medical education worldwide.
Richard M. Satava
Richard M. Satava, MD FACS
Professor of Surgery
Department of Surgery
University of Washington edical Center, Seattle, Washington
Richard Satava, MD, FACS, is Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington Medical Center, and Senior Science Advisor at the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command in Ft. Detrick, MD.
Prior positions include Professor of Surgery at Yale University and a military appointment as Professor of Surgery (USUHS) in the Army Medical Corps assigned to General Surgery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Program Manager of Advanced Biomedical Technology at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
He has served on the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Committee on Health, Food and Safety. He is currently a member of the Emerging Technologies and Resident Education, and Informatics committees of the American College of Surgeons (ACS), is past president of the Society of American Gastrointestinal Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES), past president of the Society of Laparoendoscopic Surgeons (SLS), and is on the Board of Governors of the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) as well as on a number of surgical societies. He is on the editorial board of numerous surgical and scientific journals, and active in numerous surgical and engineering societies.
During his 23 years of military surgery he has been an active flight surgeon, an Army astronaut candidate, MASH surgeon for the Grenada Invasion, and a hospital commander during Desert Storm, all the while continuing clinical surgical practice. While striving to practice the complete discipline of surgery, he is aggressively pursuing the leading edge of advanced technologies to formulate the architecture for the next generation of Medicine.
Gang Zong
Gordon (Gang) Zong, currently the CEO of Sinoipro IP Management and Technology Transfer Co., Ltd., an Adjunct Professor at Shanghai Intellectual Property Research Center, and the CEO of Kaiyi Biotechnology Co., Ltd.. He is an expert consultant for China’s State Intellectual Property Office, Shanghai Intellectual Property Office, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Between 2007-2013, he was the Managing Director of The Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) at Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences (SIBS), Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he established the first professional technology transfer office in China. His pioneering work at SIBS OTT was recognized by many governmental leaders including Chinese Primary Minister and Vice minister, widely reported by the media, and written as the subject of a Harvard Business School Case. During 2000-2006 and 1993-1998, he worked for over 10 years in IP management, technology transfer, business development, and cancer research at The University of Texas MD Anderson Caner Center – the Number 1 ranked cancer center in the US. Additionally, during 2010-2011 he was the Vice Chairman of the Government Industry University Transaction Committee, Licensing Executive Society International (LESI). He has done hundreds of licensing and collaboration deals in the US and China, and has also been actively involving in forming high-tech and biotech startups, formed several startup companies both in China and in the US including two startups with US Venture Capital funding (one is now listed on NASDAQ). He has over twenty years of experiences in technology commercialization, business consulting, new venture startup, and life sciences research.