Frank Samuel, AAB Chair, has been involved in biomedical technology and health care issues for many years in Washington, D.C., and the State of Ohio. As a lawyer and trade association leader in Washington and a Federal and State official, he has dealt with recurring aspects of health care innovation, including public and private funding, entrepreneurship, venture capital formation, technology evaluation, and domestic and foreign government regulation. His most recent professional position was Science and Technology Advisor to the Governor of Ohio, where he was a principal architect of Ohio’s Third Frontier Project, one of the nation’s premier State initiatives to encourage economic development through support of applied research, technology commercialization and early stage capital creation. He currently serves on the National Advisory Council of the California Health Benefits Review Program and the Board of Directors of Providence Hospital in Washington. He has served as a member of Institute of Medicine advisory bodies on biomedical technology issues and as a member of several biomedical company boards of directors. His paper on a venture capital strategy for the Great Lakes region was recently published by The Brookings Institution. He is a graduate of Hiram College and Harvard Law School.

Anthony J. Dennis, Ph.D., is President and CEO of BioOhio. He is a microbiologist, entrepreneur, technology advocate and native Ohioan and became president of Edison BioTechnology Center, the predecessor organization to BioOhio, on January 1, 2002. Dr. Dennis is the third president in the organization’s 15-year history. He succeeded Frank Samuel Jr., who left the post to become science and technology advisor to Ohio Governor Bob Taft in June 2000. After receiving B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in microbiology from The Ohio State University, he began to work for Battelle in Columbus. He then served a two-year stint as president of IntraCel, a biotech company operating in Geneva, Switzerland. He returned to the U.S. to serve as vice president for research and development at Tastemaker (now Givaudan, a division of Roche).Dr. Dennis then co-founded Nutri-Logics, Inc., and following that, he was co-founding of another startup, BIO-NOVA, in Portland, before joining BioOhio.

Mark comes to GCIC with a career of building successful programs to introduce new concepts and new modalities to new markets. He has managed all facets of product and market development spanning diagnostic and interventional cardiology, interventional radiology and neuroradiology, stroke treatment, image-guided surgery, drug delivery and oncology. Mark has served on the senior management team of TomTec Imaging Systems, Image Guided Technologies, EKOS Corporation, and Sonus Pharmaceuticals. Prior to concentrating his focus on start-up ventures and early stage market development, he held progressively more responsible and trailblazing positions in marketing and business development for Hewlett-Packard’s Medical Products Group. Specializing in cardiovascular ultrasound, Mark managed high performance cardiac diagnostic systems, introduced products to new market segments including private office and interventional cardiology, and developed new applications including 3D and stress echocardiography, and catheter-based intravascular ultrasound. In conjunction with these programs he managed strategic relationships with various corporate partners, investors, universities, inventors, clinical investigators and manufacturers. Mark received a B.A. degree in Natural Science from Johns Hopkins University, an M.S. degree in Physiology from the Medical College of Wisconsin, and an M.S. degree in Technical Communication from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Matthew Pollman, MD currently is a biomedical consultant. He has held a number of leadership positions in the development of cardiovascular therapeutics and diagnostics. He has most recently served as Medical Director, R&D, for Abbott Vascular. In this role, Dr. Pollman was the principal medical and scientific advisor for the R&D and Business Development organizations. Prior to this role, Dr. Pollman was the Director of New Ventures, Guidant Corporation where he led a multi-disciplinary in-house start-up incubator tasked with identifying, exploring and incubating through PhI/PhII clinical trials, novel therapeutic opportunities utilizing emerging device or combination product technologies. Dr. Pollman has also directed therapeutic/diagnostic target discovery and development efforts as Director of Cardiovascular Biology and Molecular Medicine for Millennium Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Pollman is a cardiologist and cardiovascular molecular biologist and has authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles. He has served on the faculties of Harvard Medical School and Morehouse School of Medicine.

Tom Sudow is the Director of Business Development for the Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center (GCIC). Tom is charged with attracting bioscience and medical device companies to the GCIC. He also serves as a Vice President of Attraction for Team Northeastern Ohio (Team NEO). Prior to joining Team NEO and the GCIC he served as Executive Director of the Beachwood, Ohio, Chamber of Commerce. In his role with the Chamber he also coordinated economic development efforts for the City of Beachwood. During his tenure as Executive Director, he recruited more than 20 international companies to establish their North America headquarters in Beachwood. He has worked in Israel with Israeli hi tech and bioscience businesses for the past 8 years. He is actively involved in the Northeastern Ohio community and served a three-year term as chair of the Northern Ohio Area Chambers of Commerce (NOACC), an association of 123 chambers with more than 35,000 members. The largest independent Chamber organization in the US. During Tom’s Chairmanship NOACC membership increased by over 100%. He is a frequent guest columnist in publications such as Crain’s Cleveland Business and Inside Business.