Baltimore Innovation Week 2017

Jung Min Lee is a sophomore at Johns Hopkins University, where she is currently studying Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science. She first became interested in Biomedical Engineering when she was introduced to a 'lab-on-a-chip' while working in a lab during high school. Her interests have expanded since then to include point of care devices and personalized health care. Jung Min is currently leading a team that is working to develop a microfluidic chip that can serve as a platform for monitoring therapeutic drug levels.

Brad Hennessie is the CEO of NextStep Robotic Inc., a company whose portable robotic ankle exoskeleton is being developed as the first ever treatment option to reverse foot drop in stroke victims. Foot drop, which occurs in a wide range of neurological and orthopedic conditions, is recognized as the inability to lift the toe during normal walking. He has been working with the inventors of this technology for 8 years, managing multiple grants with Drs. Macko, Roy, and Forrester. He started with the team as a single study coordinator and quickly grew into a leadership role over the past few years, helping manage the day-to-day tasks and long term goals for the Maryland Exercise and Robotics Center of Excellence (MERCE). MERCE is a ~$7M/year research organization originally founded by Dr. Richard Macko that is part of the Baltimore VA Medical Center and the Department of Neurology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Brad’s conception of the business model and commercialization plan led to the team’s successful TEDCO MII Phase I/II submission and attracting their first external investor.

Since transitioning out of the robotics lab and starting full time with NextStep Robotics, he has directed an engineering team with Dr. Gil Blankenship at the Maryland Development Center to create the first prototype of the portable ankle robot.

Brad’s early development as a leader was shaped by his 8 years in the Maryland Army National Guard where he learned the importance of having confidence in the quality of a product by being a parachute rigger.

Babila Lima is the Director of the Business Process Improvement Office for the Department of General Services. Since 2007, Babila has worked in City government in a number of different agencies and capacities including the City Council President’s Office, Mayor’s Office and as a consultant on cross agency process challenges. Prior to the current role, his City projects included an overhaul of the City’s special event permitting process, and the establishment of a regulatory, licensing and management system to support the growth of food trucks and mobile vendors in the City of Baltimore. He also developed and managed a yearlong initiative in Mongolia to improve garbage and recycling collection through a business social responsibility program funded by USAID.

Dr. Greg Walsh is an assistant professor at the University of Baltimore where he is the graduate program director for the MS in Interaction Design and Information Architecture as well as the UX Design program. He is an interaction design researcher who focuses on user-centered design. In his almost 20 years of Baltimore City residency, Dr. Walsh has worked at a number of Baltimore-based interaction design firms and continues to focus on innovation through mentoring start-ups in the art of user-centered design. He is ruggedly handsome and a recipient of a Google Faculty Research Award.

Founder, Ravi created the messaging platform that would become Sunrise Health after watching a close friend go through depression and seeing her suffer from loneliness between therapy sessions. Ravi has previous experience engineering AI products in multiple settings, from patient-doctor matching at a startup in India, to building out and selling a robotic vertical at a British multinational corporation. While a masters student at Johns Hopkins, he also helped found the VC firm A-Level Capital, raising its first fund and making multiple investments.

Emily P. English is the Chief Product Officer and Interim President of Gemstone Biotherapeutics, LLC. In this role, she will lead Gemstone’s product development plans to bring innovative wound healing technologies from the lab bench into the clinic. She thrives on for working with small teams at the leading edge of technology development, and she brings a passion shaped by personal experience to the development of wound healing solutions. Prior to joining Gemstone, Dr. English spent eight years at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, where she was the Global Communications Program Manager. She holds a Bachelor’s degree, Magna cum laude, in chemistry from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Outside of work, Dr. English enjoys spending time with her family, and she is an avid curler.

Natalie D. Eddington, PhD, FAAPS, FCP, is dean of the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy (UMSOP) and a professor of pharmaceutical sciences. She is also executive director of University Regional Partnerships for the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB).

Dr. Eddington is a nationally known expert in drug delivery and pharmacokinetics. Her research focuses on various medications used in the treatment of cancer, epilepsy, arthritis, and drugs of abuse and on understanding the role of biopharmaceutics and pharmacokinetics in elucidating the underlying mechanisms important in optimizing drug therapy. 

Under Dr. Eddington’s leadership, the School of Pharmacy has established a number of centers and programs including the FDA-supported Maryland Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation (M-CERSI), which is a collaborative agreement with the FDA to promote innovation in support of the development and evaluation of safe and effective products. Dr. Eddington has designed numerous international regulatory courses for clinicians and scientists from South Korea, Argentina, Brazil, the United States, and Japan on the United States’ drug development process and the FDA regulatory infrastructure surrounding medication and device development. Most recently, under Dr. Eddington’s leadership, the School has launched a transformational pharmapreneurism initiative, which seeks to position the School’s world class faculty, its wonderful students, and exceptional staff to achieve their career aspirations and address our nation’s health care, research, policy, and societal needs.

Tom Kraak is a JavaScript developer at Oath, a subsidiary of Verizon, which houses 50+ media and technology brands including AOL, Yahoo, and HuffPost. He is passionate about learning, teaching, and the web platform. Tom combines these passions in frequent contributions to his favorite open source projects on GitHub. Besides the long-standing Academy course at Betamore, he teaches and mentors at Thinkful, Baltimore NodeSchool and various local meetups for junior web developers.