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STEVEN ARLESS, BSc’71(Chemistry), is a prominent Â鶹AV alumnus who returned to his alma mater in the fall of 2016 as Professor of Practice in the Faculty of MedicineĚý(now Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences) in the Department of Surgery’s cutting-edge Surgical Innovation Program. More recently, he joined one of Canada’s fastest growing medical technology accelerators, Centech, as Entrepreneur-in-Residence.
After graduating from Â鶹AV, Mr. Arless worked for 17 years at Smith & Nephew Inc., serving as President for close to five years. His experience includes extensive involvement in technology transfer and strategic acquisition projects across the United States and Canada.
His innovative talent led him to CryoCath Technologies Inc., a catheter-based cryoablation technology for the treatment of Atrial Fibrillation, which he nurtured from a startup to commercial success, serving as President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) from 1996 to 2006, ultimately selling this to Medtronic Inc. for $400 million. Mr. Arless completed an MBA at Concordia University in 2008. He maintained his interest in the diagnosis of and minimally invasive therapies for rhythm disorders of the heart, assuming the position of CEO of Cleveland-based CardioInsight, from 2009 to 2012, with the Company ultimately being sold to Medtronic for over $100 million.
Mr. Arless is the Co-Founder and past CEO and Chairman of the Board (2015-2019) of Soundbite Medical, a Montreal-based shockwave technology company, also in the field of cardiovascular disease therapy.
His most notable award was Ernst & Young’s 2005 Entrepreneur of the Year in the life science category.
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CARMELA DE LUCA, PhD’99, JD’05, is a partner with Bereskin & Parr LLP. Carmela is a lawyer and registered patent agent in Canada and the United States and practices in all areas of intellectual property, focusing on patent matters, including advising clients on strategic global aspects of obtaining and managing patent portfolios, as well as in the preparation and procurement of patents and industrial designs. She works closely with clients including startups, universities as well as multinationals in preparing and prosecuting patent applications relating to biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, biologics, diagnostics, green technologies and other areas in the life sciences. Carmela is also active in the analysis of patent issues such as validity, infringement and freedom to operate. In addition, Carmela has experience advising on regulatory compliance and on plant breeder's rights.
While obtaining her Ph.D. from Â鶹AV, Carmela conducted research in the areas of inflammation, signal transduction and virology. Prior to earning a law degree from the University of Toronto, Carmela worked as a post-doctoral fellow at a research institute of an international biotechnology company where her research focused on cancer cell biology, knock-out technologies, genetic screens and genomics.
She regularly presents at conferences, has written and presented on various aspects of intellectual property law and co-authored a number of peer-reviewed scientific publications. She has been listed as a leading practitioner in the area of patent law and has received media coverage for her novel work in the biotechnology field.
Carmela is the founding and Emeritus Co-chair and steering committee member of the Greater Montréal Chapter of Women in Bio (WIB). She is also the current chair of the Young WIB (YWIB) committee organizing STEM events for high school students. She is a faculty member of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada's (IPIC) Patent Drafting Course in 2017 and 2018, and has been active with the organization for a number of years. She is involved with the Women in IP Networking Group (WING) of IPIC and previously chaired the IPIC Young Practitioner’s Committee, and was also a Board member of the Canadian charity, Meal Exchange.
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THOMAS FEVENS, PhD is an Associate Professor, Computer Science and Software Engineering, at Concordia University, and an Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Surgery, at Â鶹AV. He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Â鶹AV from 2000 to 2001 in the School of Computer Science, specializing in Computational Geometry. He is a Director for the Surgical Innovation Program, a collaboration between Â鶹AV, Concordia and the École de technologie supĂ©rieure. While at Queen’s University, Dr. Fevens obtained a BSc in Astrophysics with honours in 1990, a MSc in Computing and Information Science in 1994 specializing in Numerical Analysis, a MSc in Physics in 1993 specializing in General Relativity and a PhD in Computing and Information Science in 1999 specializing in Computational Geometry. An expert in Artificial Intelligence and Medical Imaging, he has published several articles on Computer-Aided Breast Cancer Malignancy Classification, Clinical Image Segmentation, and Deep Learning for Medical Imagery. His areas of research also include: Surgical Innovation - Software, Computational Geometry, Computer Gaming, and Wireless Networks.
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RAYMOND HAKIM, MDCM’76, is Professor of Medicine in the division of nephrology and hypertension at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He received a master of science degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a PhD in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and worked in Montreal as a research engineer for Hydro-QuĂ©bec. He then attended medical school at Â鶹AV and performed his residency in internal medicine at the Royal Victoria Hospital of the MUHC. He carried out his renal fellowship at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. From 1980 to 1987, he served on the faculty of Harvard University and was Associate Professor of Medicine and attending nephrologist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. In 1995, Dr. Hakim was one of the founders and the Chief Medical Officer of the Renal Care Group, a provider of outpatient dialysis services. The group merged with Fresenius Medical Care in 2007, and Dr. Hakim became the Chief Medical Officer, serving from 2009 to 2012. He has published extensively on clinical and basic research in dialysis and plasmapheresis, and has contributed more than 35 chapters to medical books. Dr. Hakim is the recipient of numerous awards, including being listed among “Best Doctors in America” and “America’s TOP Physicians” for multiple years, the Medal of Excellence from the American Association of Kidney Patients Award, and the prestigious Belding H. Scribner Award in 2017. In addition to the Hakim Family Prize for Clinical Innovation in Health Care, Dr. Hakim also funded the Catherine McLaughlin Hakim Chair in Medicine and, more recently, the Hakim Family Bursary for newly arrived immigrants and refugees entering or enrolled in a health science degree program at Â鶹AV.
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ANDREA MARIER, B.Comm’08, is a finance and investment expert. With over 10 years of business development experience that has generated over half a billion dollars in sales, Andrea now dedicates her time to helping entrepreneurs launch their businesses. Andrea is a trainer for business startups, and currently runs the Â鶹AV Lean Startup Program and Â鶹AV X-1 Accelerator as Program Manager of the Â鶹AV Dobson Centre for Entrepreneurship.
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DAVID-DAN NGUYEN, MCDM’22, is completing his medical degree at Â鶹AV as an Azrieli Loran Scholar and will be pursuing a Master’s Degree in Public Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the fall as a fellow at the Center for Surgery and Public Health (Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School).
Fascinated by how we deliver care, David-Dan is passionate about health services research, community health and medical technology. He has worked with Dialogue Technologies, a telemedicine startup that has recently completed a $12M Series A, and is a Co-Founder of the CHASM Incubator, an accelerator for sustainable student-led community health projects targeting the needs of historically marginalized populations of Montreal. His research interests include costs, patterns, and outcomes of surgical care, disparities in care, surgical innovation and medical education. David-Dan has received various distinctions for his research and has presented his work at multiple events. David-Dan aspires to later work at the intersection of clinical care, medical innovation and health policy.
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BRENT NORTON, MDCM ’84, is a visionary business leader in the Life Science industry with operational and Director experience across several successful enterprises which have achieved significant product sales and returns for investors. He uses his cross functional knowledge to develop strategy, raise capital and build important relationships in the academic and business community. Dr. Norton founded PreMD, completing IPO’s and listings on both TSX and AMEX. Operationally, he has built R&D and commercial operations, led transactions with AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, L’Oreal, Parke Davis/Pfizer, etc., and taken products through the FDA to global out-licensing with Johnson & Johnson. He is a founding Director of Novadaq Technologies (TSX:NDQ, NASDAQ:NVDQ), which was one of Canada’s most valuable medical companies and sold to Stryker Corporation. Dr. Norton has been an active member of several BOD’s in Canada and the US. He is a Venture Partner at Lumira Capital, President & CEO of Ortho RTI, a Director of Aeterna Zentaris (TSX:AEZS, NASDAQ:AEZS), a member of the Research Committee for CAMH, an Advisory BOD member for the Ivey International Centre for Health Innovation, a Director of Alpine Ontario and Past-President and Director of the Osler Bluff Ski Club. His contributions to six companies have allowed early investors the opportunity to crystallize investment gains of over $2.5B.
In addition to his medical degree from Â鶹AV, Dr. Norton holds an MBA from Ivey Business School at Western University and was granted the ICD.D designation by the Institute of Corporate Directors following the completion of the Directors Education Program at the Rotman School of Business in Toronto.
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DAN RODEN, MDCM’74, received BSc and medical degrees from Â鶹AV, and trained in Internal Medicine at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. He then went to Vanderbilt University where, after fellowships in Clinical Pharmacology and Cardiology, he joined the faculty. His initial career focus – that he has maintained – was the clinical, genetic, cellular, and molecular basis of arrhythmia susceptibility and variability responses to arrhythmia therapies. Dr. Roden served as Director of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology from 1992 to 2004 and in 2006 was named to lead Vanderbilt’s broader efforts in genomics and pharmacogenomics discovery and implementation. He is Principal Investigator for the Vanderbilt sites of the National Institutes of Health’s JUDGES” 12 Pharmacogenomics Research Network (PGRN) and the National Human Genome Research Institute’s Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) Network. He directs the Vanderbilt DNA databank BioVU, a discovery resource that as of spring 2018 included 250,000 samples linked to de-identified electronic medical records. He is a leader in Vanderbilt’s PREDICT project that since 2010 has preemptively embedded pharmacogenomic variant data in the electronic medical records of more than 14,000 Vanderbilt patients. Dr. Roden has received many awards including the Distinguished Scientist Award and the Douglas Zipes lectureship from the Heart Rhythm Society and the Distinguished Scientist Award and the inaugural Functional Genomics and Translational Biology Medal of Honor from the American Heart Association. He currently serves on the Advisory Council to the National Human Genome Research Institute and the Science Board of the FDA. He has been elected to membership in the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians, and fellowship in the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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ELAINE WANG, MDCM’77, is Vice President, Clinical Development at Lyndra in Watertown, Massachusetts. Dr. Wang is a passionate pharmaceutical development physician who aims for efficient clinical development and thoughtful conduct of medical affairs in order to provide effective and tolerable agents to those who can benefit as quickly as possible. As Director of Clinical Development and Medical Affairs at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc. (BIPI), Dr. Wang recognized the importance of having the opportunity to train the next generation of clinical researchers and to introduce them to opportunities outside of academia, so she developed a program for Respiratory Fellows at Yale to spend a year in at BIPI. Her other positions have been in biopharmaceuticals and large pharma, developing both small and large molecules in different subject matter areas. At the same time, she is well-acquainted with conducting research at an academic institution. Earlier in her career, Dr. Wang had a primary appointment as Associate Professor in Pediatrics and cross appointment at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto. Her academic research examined diagnostic evaluation, prognostic markers, and interventions in respiratory infections, particularly those due to respiratory syncytial virus.
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