Speaker and Facilitator Biographies

Elias Caro, President of Biocomx

Mr. Caro is president of Biocomx a nonprofit organization that specialize in commercialization training of medical early-stage biomedical companies. The Biocomx flagship program C3i has trained hundreds of NIH SBIR recipients. Since 2020, he’s been a member of the RADx® program steering committee, member of the viability panel, steering, panel, workplan review. Mr. Caro has been in charge of deep dive process managing 90 professionals’ assignments to over 200 projects.

From 2006 -2020, Mr. Caro oversaw the $200 million Coulter Foundation’s biomedical commercialization programs that funded over 600 projects, raised over $6 billion in venture funding, and has brought more than 50 products to market. From 1998 to 2006 in Beckman Coulter, he occupied positions of increasing responsibility as Vice President of Diagnostic R&D, President of the Biomedical Research Division and Executive Vice President in charge of International Diagnostics Commercial Operations and Worldwide Life Sciences. Mr. Caro holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering, master in Polymer science, an MBA and is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Tony Coelho, Disability Advocate

The Honorable Tony Coelho is a retired U.S. Congressman from California, a former House of Representatives Majority Whip, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman and the principal author of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Diagnosed with epilepsy when he was 22 years old, Mr. Coelho has spent his entire adult life helping advance the lives of people with disabilities. While he calls this his “ministry”, those in the disability community call him their “voice” and “champion.” Mr. Coelho founded The Coelho Center for Disability Law, Policy and Innovation at Loyola Marymount University.

Michael K. Dempsey, Entrepreneur in Residence at the Center for the Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT)

Mike Dempsey has been working in the field of medical devices for more than 35 years; during this time, he has invented or led products that have treated over twelve million people. Mr. Dempsey holds over a dozen patents on various medical devices and has founded and led three medical device companies. Mr. Dempsey is the Entrepreneur in Residence at the Center for the Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT), the Director of the CIMIT Accelerator Program, and a lecturer at MIT. Mr. Dempsey’s primary responsibilities in these academic settings are to lead academic innovators through the commercialization journey and to teach students the fundamentals of building medical companies. At CIMIT, he leads a team of highly experienced med-tech executives who join the academic team with up to a full-time commitment and for as long as two years, effectively acting as an interim CEO. This intensive, practical, and focused approach to facilitating the academic-to-commercial transition has led to a commercialization success rate of 42 percent and an average time to commercialize of 18 months. Mr. Dempsey was also the PI on several NIH SBIR grants, a frequent grant reviewer, and has received a special citation from the Commissioner of the FDA for "exceptional initiative and leadership to protect the public health." During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Dempsey and the CIMIT team are the coordinating center for the NIH-NIBIB RADx Tech initiative, which is charged with supporting the innovations to support the deployment of tens of millions of SARS-COV-2 tests every day.

Jill Heemskerk, PhD, Deputy Director, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB)

Jill Heemskerk has a 23-year record of distinguished service at the National Institutes of Health. She joined NIBIB in 2014 as Associate Director for Research Administration and was subsequently appointed NIBIB Deputy Director. She serves as Co-lead of NIBIB’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx Tech) program, a $1.6 billion initiative to increase SARS-COV-2 testing capacity and performance. She came to NIBIB from the National Institute of Mental Health, where she was Deputy Director for the Division of Adult Translational Research, focused on clinical trials in psychiatry. Before this, she was Acting Director of the Office of Translational Research at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. There, she built a large program in pre-clinical therapeutics development for neurological diseases, emphasizing drug discovery chemistry and translation of basic research findings to the clinic. She established a drug development program called the NIH Blueprint Neurotherapeutics Network, a ‘virtual pharma’ forum that continues to thrive as a model for academic collaboration with small businesses and the pharmaceutical industry.

Paul Tessier, Chief Operating Officer at the Consortia for Improving Medicine with Innovation & Technology (CIMIT)

Paul Tessier is an experienced medical product developer, manager, and entrepreneur who for over 40 years has been dedicated to commercializing innovative medical products to improve patient care and healthcare delivery. He oversaw the development of many successful medical products at Hewlett-Packard and Philips prior to founding a series of companies: Radianse, Inc which provided unique workflow solutions for healthcare; Technology Innovators which supplied technology to assist the elderly and infirm; and Pure Marrow a start-up focused on transforming stem cell and marrow harvesting. While at CIMIT, he has provided coaching and facilitation on translation of medical research and medical product development at the Boston Biomedical Innovation Center (B-BIC), funded by NHLBI, the New England Pediatric Device Consortium (NEPDC), funded by the FDA Office of Orphan Products Development, the Point of Care Technology Research Network (POCTRN), funded by NIBIB, and the Center for Biomedical Innovation and Technology (CBIT) at Yale University. Internationally, Mr. Tessier has worked with EIT Health, a network backed by the European Union, Biocat, a public/private foundation that champions the healthcare and life sciences ecosystem in Catalonia, and BRIDGE-U, funded by USAID, a public-private-academic program for research utilization in the Liberian health sector. Most recently, his work at CIMIT has been focused on advancing U.S. COVID-19 testing capabilities in his role as Operations Lead for the RADx Tech program.

Bruce Tromberg, PhD, Director, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB)

Dr. Tromberg is the Director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where he oversees an approximately $400 million per year portfolio of research programs focused on developing, translating, and commercializing engineering, physical science, and computational technologies in biology and medicine. In addition, he leads NIBIB’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx Tech) program, a $1.6 billion initiative to increase SARS-COV-2 testing capacity and performance.

Prior to joining NIH in January 2019, he was a professor of biomedical engineering and surgery at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). During this time, he served as director of the Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic (BLIMC) (2003-2018) and the Laser Microbeam and Medical Program (LAMMP), an NIH National Biomedical Technology Center at the BLIMC (1997-2018). Dr. Tromberg specializes in the development of optics and photonics technologies for biomedical imaging and therapy. He has co-authored more than 450 publications and holds 24 patents in new technology development as well as bench-to-bedside clinical translation, validation, and commercialization of devices. He has trained more than 80 students and fellows, is co-founder of the biophotonics company, Modulim, Inc, and has served on numerous advisory boards in academia, industry, government, and private foundations.