Event Categorie: Special Event

Sponsored by

Frank Fischer has more than 40 years of senior management experience in the medical device industry. He co-founded NeuroPace in Dec 1997, led the company as its President and Chief Executive Officer from January 2000 thru July 2019, served on its Board of Directors since inception and is currently Chairman of the Board. Prior to joining NeuroPace, Mr. Fischer was President and Chief Executive Officer of Heartport, Inc., a cardiac surgery company, from May 1998 until September 1999 and served on Heartport’s Board of Directors. Previously, Mr. Fischer was President and Chief Executive Officer and a director of Ventritex, Inc., a company that pioneered implantable cardiac defibrillators, from July 1987 until the sale of the company to St. Jude Medical, Inc. in 1997. Before joining Ventritex, he held various management positions at Cordis Corporation from 1977 to 1987 in the cardiac and neurosurgical device areas, serving most recently as President of the Implantable Products Division. Currently he is a member of the Board of Directors of Nevro, Inc., the Board of Trustees of both Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Babson College as well as the Board of Directors of the Epilepsy Foundation of America. Mr. Fischer holds B.S.M.E. and M.S. in Management degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Sponsored by

Dr. Parhizgar is an experienced and highly successful medical device industry executive and serial entrepreneur currently serving on a number of industry and academic board positions. In her five year tenure serving as President and Chief Executive Officer of Claret Medical, Inc., an embolic protection company, she transformed the company from an early stage ventured backed company to a successful revenue staged company with commercial sales in the US, EU and other markets in excess of $20m in revenue in 2018. She successfully transacted the company’s sale to Boston Scientific Corporation in late 2018 for cash proceeds of $270M.

Prior to joining Claret Medical, she served as the Chief Operating Officer of Conor Medsystems Inc., a reservoir-based drug eluting coronary stent company, which led to the acquisition of the company by Cordis, a Johnson & Johnson Company in 2007 for $1.3B. She spent one year post merger with Johnson & Johnson for successful integration of the companies.

Between 1996-2002, she held the position of Executive Vice President of Clinical, Regulatory, and Quality Engineering at Arterial Vascular Engineering (AVE), an innovative broad portfolio interventional cardiology, peripheral and endovascular company, which was acquired in year 2000 by Medtronic Inc., for $3.4B and was the foundation of the Vascular division of Medtronic. She spent two years at Medtronic post-merger in increasing roles & responsibilities leading to her position as Executive Vice President of Emerging Ventures and New Technologies.

Prior to AVE, Dr Parhizgar held management positions at J&J, CR Bard, and Summit technologies. Dr. Parhizgar has served as an advisor to emerging medical device technology companies including several Board of Directors and Scientific Advisory Board positions throughout her career.

Dr. Parhizgar has received both her Ph.D. in Cell, Gene therapy and Tissue Engineering and her M.Sc. in Biomechanical Engineering and Artificial Organ Design from Brown University, Providence, RI.