David Zar

Many great ideas are developed in a university, or commercial, laboratory but then need to be promulgated throughout the industry and, eventually, brought to market if anyone can find use in them. This process is fraught with risk at many levels: technical roadblocks, financial hurdles and regulatory burden, in the case of medical devices. This talk will highlight the many ways one can fail to meet the needs of the market and, thus, fail to get the solution to those who might find value in it. Examples of success and failure will be shown as well as some specific strategies that may prove helpful, specifically, for medical devices.

Biography:

David M. Zar received his Bachelor's Degrees in CS and EE, as well as his Masters in EE from Washington University in St. Louis. He was then employed by his alma mater for over 19 years where he taught in the Computer Engineering program and was involved in numerous research projects ranging from medical imaging (mostly in ultrasound), to high-speed networking, to asynchronous integrated circuit design. During this time, he started three companies (an ultrasound consulting company, an asynchronous circuits/security company and a medical device company). He left the university in 2009 to pursue, full time, these companies and their technologies and has brought several medical devices to the market, as well as had spin-offs and acquisitions of some of the companies.