Core Team
Surendar Magar, PhD - President & CEO
Dr. Magar, a co-founder of HealthMicro, is a pioneer and serial entrepreneur in the area of semiconductor solutions for DSP, multimedia and wireless communications. His 30+ years of experience dates back to the 1980s at Texas Instruments, where he co-architected and led the design of the first three generations of the TMS320 DSP product family. This highly successful product family originated TI’s dominant DSP business and DSP chip industry in general. Prior to co-founding HealthMicro, he was a co-founder and CTO/Director of Athena Semiconductors, a wireless chip company acquired by Broadcom. Previously, he was the founder and President/CEO of ComSilica that merged with its RF technology partner, Hellenic SA of Greece, to become Athena Semiconductors. Dr. Magar also was Director of Product Development at Signal Processing Technologies (SPT) division of Honeywell’s Semiconductor Group, and President/CEO of Array Microsystems, a company spun off from Honeywell. He holds a B.Sc. (EE) from the University of Aston (UK) and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Birmingham (UK). He is an inventor in over thirty patents.
Ali M. Niknejad, PhD – Chief Technologist
Dr. Niknejad, Chief Technologist and co-founder of HealthMicro, also serves as Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley. He is a Faculty Director of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center (BWRC), a leading research center at UC Berkeley pursuing many aspects of integrated radio design, and also the co-director of the BSIM Research Group. Prof Niknejad’s current research interests lie within the area of RF/microwave and mm-wave integrated circuits, particularly as applied to wireless and broadband communication circuits. His interests also include device modeling and numerical techniques in electromagnetics. His CMOS radio work includes low power picoRadios, Cognitive Universal Radios and 60GHz transceivers. Prof Niknejad has worked and consulted with several leading semiconductor manufacturers of CMOS RF integrated circuits. He received his B.S.E.E degree from the University of California, Los Angeles and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
Randall Lee, MD, PhD – Chief Medical Scientist
Dr. Lee, a co-founder of HealthMicro and a Professor of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, is guiding the healthcare aspects of the technology. Dr. Lee has helped pioneer many of the radiofrequency catheter ablation techniques for complex arrhythmias commonly used in practice today and is an internationally recognized expert in cardiac tissue engineering. Dr. Lee continues to be involved in the development of procedures, devices and biotechnology for the treatment of cardiac diseases and catheter-based therapies for arrhythmias. He serves on the advisory boards/consultant to a variety of companies. Dr. Lee graduated from UCLA Medical School where he concurrently obtained his PhD in Pharmacology. He obtained his training in cardiology and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in biochemistry/molecular biology at Stanford University. Dr. Lee completed his training in cardiac electrophysiology at the University of California, San Francisco before joining the cardiology faculty at UCSF.
Ian O’Donnell, PhD – Principal Engineer
Dr. O’Donnell has over ten years experience in the design and implementation of RF and ASIC silicon devices, specializing in analog and digital architecture and circuit design. His academic work, completed in 2006, focused on the design of low power single chip CMOS radios employing CDMA and ultra-wide band radio technologies. While working in industry, he was a member of the design teams for NVIDIA and Silicon Graphics, providing leadership in a wide variety of areas ranging from ASIC architecture to design and testing of various analog and digital subsystems. He received his BS (high honors), MS, and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California-Berkeley, where he was the recipient of the Jack Neubauer Award for best system paper of the year published by the Vehicular Technology Society.
James Beck, BSEE – Hardware Engineering Specialist
Mr. Beck has over 25 years experience in the design of systems for a variety of applications, including sensor devices, wireless communication boards, storage systems, video/graphic boards, CPUs, DSP systems and set top boxes. He has broad skills in optimizing electrical and physical systems to meet demanding practical criteria. He has worked and consulted on many challenging projects for a variety of companies, including Sun, Intel, Paradise, UC Berkeley and International Computer Science Institute. Mr. Beck received his B.S.E.E. degree from the California Institute of Technology.
Thomas Varghese, M. Tech. – Director, Systems Engineering
Mr. Varghese, based in Bangalore, India, has over twenty years experience in silicon and systems designs and applications engineering, with emphasis on DSP algorithms and wireless designs. He previously co-managed India operations of Athena Semiconductors, Inc. that was acquired by Broadcom. At Athena, and subsequently at Broadcom, he was closely involved in various aspects of the design of Wi-Fi chips, their reference designs, and customer support. Those products gained market success with major customers. Prior to Athena/Broadcom, Mr. Varghese has served in key engineering positions at Wipro and Tata Elxsi developing various multimedia and wireless products. He also has worked at India’s Defense Research & Development Organization and Indian Railways. Mr. Varghese holds M.Tech. in Radar and Communications Engineering from IIT, Delhi.
Investor Directors
Michael Borrus, JD, General Partner, X/Seed Capital Partners
Mr. Borrus, a Board Director of HealthMicro is the founding general partner of X/Seed Capital (Menlo Park, CA) a seed-focused early stage venture fund focused on breakthrough innovations, an investor in HealthMicro. He also was Co-founder/Co-Director of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy (BRIE) while running a consulting practice. He served as Managing Director of a merchant-bank start-up, The Petkevich Group, leading its technology banking group specializing in life sciences. Mr. Borrus serves on the Advisory Committee to the U.S. Government’s Advanced Technology Program (ATP), several National Academy of Science/National Research Council Steering Committees, the Board of Trustees of the National Center for Women and Information Technology, and is a Director of several privately held technology companies. He is an honors graduate of Harvard Law School, the University of California, Berkeley and Princeton University. He is a member of the California State Bar.
N. Damodar Reddy, MS, MBA, Chairman/CEO, Sutisoft, Inc. and
Partner, Reddy Capital
Mr. Reddy, an investor and Board Director of HealthMicro, is the founder, Chairman, CEO and investor of SutiSoft, Inc., a software company. From 1985 to 2005, Mr. Reddy founded and served as Chairman, President and CEO of Alliance Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ: ALSC) which had earned the ranking of 8th fastest growing company in the U.S. by Forbes Magazine. At Alliance, he pioneered the joint venture semiconductor manufacturing model, investing over $200 million in various semiconductor Fabs – UMC, Chartered and Tower. Alliance Semiconductor’s venture arm also successfully invested in numerous early stage technology companies. Mr. Reddy also served in various management positions at RCA, Fairchild, Four Phase Systems, and Synertek. He holds a BS (EE) from Osmania University, India, an MS (EE) from North Dakota State University, and an MBA from Santa Clara University.
Technology Advisory Board
Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, Dr. Ing – Professor (EECS), University of California at Berkeley
Professor Sangiovanni-Vincentelli holds the Edgar L. and Harold H. Buttner Chair of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the UC Berkeley. He is a co-founder of Cadence and Synopsys, the two leading companies in Electronic Design Automation tools. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Cadence, Sonics, and Accent. He was a member of the HP’s Strategic Technology Advisory Board and is a member of the Science and Technology Board of General Motors. He obtained an electrical engineering and computer science degree ("Dottore in Ingegneria") summa cum laude from the Politecnico di Milano in Milan, Italy. Professor Sangiovanni-Vincentelli is an author of over 850 papers and fifteen books in the area of design tools and methodologies, large-scale systems, embedded system design, and hybrid systems. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering since 1998. In 2001, he was given the Kaufman Award of the Electronic Design Automation Council for "pioneering contributions to EDA". In 2008, he was awarded the IEEE/RSE Wolfson James Clerk Maxwell Medal "for groundbreaking contributions that have had an exceptional impact on the development of electronics and electrical engineering or related fields". Professor Sangiovanni-Vincentelli is a co-founder of HealthMicro and serving as Chairman of its Technology Advisory Board.
Matthew DeVane, MD – Cardiologist, Cardiovascular Consultants Medical Group
Dr. DeVane, a board-certified practicing cardiologist based in San Francisco Bay area, is a recognized expert in heart disease prevention. He is a key investigator in numerous state-of-the-art cardiovascular clinical research on such topics as lowering cholesterol. His life goal is to prevent heart attacks. Dr. DeVane is the Chairman of the American Heart Association Bay Area's Heart Health 2020 Campaign as well as the President of the Easy Bay Chapter. He has published in multiple scientific journals, lectures frequently, and has been a featured guest on many television and radio programs.
Charles Feldman, ScD – Cardiovascular Division, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Harvard University
Dr.Feldman is a Lecturer on Medicine, and Director of Vascular Profiling Laboratory at Brigham & Women's Hospital, Harvard University. He is a pioneer in the area of cardiac signal processing and modeling with over forty years of experience as an academician and industry executive. At BWH, he is involved with the development of new instrumentation to measure local blood flow patterns, intra coronary endothelial shear stress and remodeling characteristics in vivo and to understand the relationship between shear stress and remodeling characteristics to subsequent changes in plaque geometry, composition and clinical course. He was previously SVP at Electronics for Medicine that was acquired by Honeywell, and founder and President of CardioData Corp. Many of his originally developed cardiac algorithms are still used in today’s ECG monitors. He holds S.B., S.M. (Mech Eng), and Sc.D. (Mech Eng/Sig Proc), all from MIT.
Douglas Petty, BS – VP Global Marketing, DFine, Inc.
Mr. Petty has over 25 years of sales & marketing experience in the medical device industry. Previously, he was VP of Global Marketing at Thoratec Corporation, where he was instrumental in developing & executing programs that helped the firm’s revenue to more than double to over $280M. Mr. Petty also was VP of Global Marketing for Electro physiology & Cardiovascular Imaging at Boston Scientific where he helped grow the division’s revenue to over $130M along with leading key technology & business development initiatives. He has held executive marketing positions at VNUS Medical Technologies, Vitaphore and EP Technologies. Mr. Petty is a graduate of the University of Illinois’ School of Business Administration.
Jan Rabaey, PhD – Professor (EECS), University of California at Berkeley
Professor Rabaey is the Donald O. Pederson Distinguished Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC-Berkeley and scientific co-director of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center as well as the director of the MultiScale Systems Center. He has world renowned expertise in next-generation wireless systems, including the optimization of communication algorithms and networking protocols, the study of low power implementation architectures and circuits, and supporting design automation environments. He is the recipient of the 2010 Semiconductor Industry Association University Researcher Award. Professor Rabaey received EE and PhD degrees in applied sciences from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.
