Baltimore Innovation Week 2017

Milt Reder is VP of Engineering at Yet Analytics, where he and his team use Clojure(Script) to model human experience, learning and performance. He is a co-organizer of the Baltimore Clojure meetup, now in its 4th year.

Le`Rhone is part of the technology leadership at The Archer Group and oversees the front end development and animation disciplines. He also oversees emerging technology research via the Archer Innovations program. This team is currently exploring Virtual Reality, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence, and uses this research to educate internal teams and find new opportunities to create meaningful experiences for Archer's clients.

Le’Rhone’s decade of experience in both design and business helps Archer’s work achieve the right balance between meeting the client’s business goals and creating a digital experience worth talking about. He has applied this knowledge to projects for clients such as Wawa Foods, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase, DuPont, March of Dimes, and BarclayCard US.

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.

Moss Amer works at the Maryland Venture Fund, where he serves as a board observer for several portfolio companies, including Aledade, Fugue, and Harpoon Medical.

Prior to joining the Fund, Moss worked as a Senior Analyst at TCP Venture Capital, where he helped to build a 10-company portfolio with significant positive write-ups. Select investments include RedOwl Analytics (acquired by Forcepoint), WellDoc, and ZeroFOX.

Moss graduated magna cum laude from Brown University, where he studied entrepreneurship and technology management. He is a 2013 Venture for America fellow.

Founder, Shrenik was motivated to work on Sunrise Health after watching fellow first responders struggle with PTSD and substance use issues in silence due to the social stigma surrounding getting help. After meeting Ravi while at Johns Hopkins, he decided to put his undergraduate education on hold to found Sunrise Health, a mobile application for text-based group psychotherapy that harnesses AI to make mental health care more accessible for patients and more cost-effective for providers. Beyond Sunrise, Shrenik has experience working in business development at multiple medical technology startups, and conducting academic research at Johns Hopkins and the NIH.

Our team project, "ABSP - Active Bed Sore Prevention," was a creative concept and prototype model to prevent bed sores through a sensor-based pad that may be placed on an existing patient bed. The idea was to detect the location and magnitude of pressure differences, then use a feedback mechanism to create an air pocket at the target site in order to alleviate the pressure. Our presentation included a consideration of the potential for a large public health impact across the world, as pressure ulcers currently result in a largely preventable mortality risk and incur a heavy economic burden.

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.

Hadley VanRenterghem, originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, is a sophomore at Johns Hopkins University majoring in Biomedical Engineering.