Speakers

Dr. Katona received his BS degree in electrical engineering at the University of Michigan in 1960, and his MS and ScD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962 and 1965, respectively. He was on the faculty of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University from 1969 to 1991, and served as chairman of his department from 1980 to 1988. During 1989-91 he was Program Director for Biomedical Engineering and Aiding the Disabled at the National Science Foundation. In 1991, Dr. Katona joined The Whitaker Foundation as Vice President for Biomedical Engineering. His responsibility was to design and administer grant programs that would enhance and establish educational programs in biomedical engineering at US universities. In July 2000, he was appointed President and CEO, a position he held until the Foundation's closing in June 2006. He was appointed Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at George Mason University in September 2006.

Dr. Katona is the author of over 50 scientific papers on the control of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems. He is also the author of several papers on biomedical engineering as a profession. He served as president of the Biomedical Engineering Society in 1984-85, and is now a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and the cardiovascular section of the American Physiological Society. He served on numerous advisory committees of academic, government, and private organizations. Dr. Katona is the recipient of a Distinguished Service Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society in 2005, and the Pierre Galletti Award from AIMBE in 2006.

Arti Khana is currently a biomedical engineer at BioMarker Strategies, a biotech start-up in the Baltimore area. She plays an integral role in the design and verification of the SnapPath™ assay and platform, an automated live tumor cell processing platform. She received her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from The George Washington University in 2009 and her M.Eng. in Biomedical Engineering from Cornell University in 2010.

Brenna Rosenberg is the Biomedical Engineer for the Traumatic Injury Research Program, based at the Uniformed Services University at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD. The research program is dedicated to the early detection of significant psychological illnesses (ranging from mild cognitive deficits to depression, PTSD, and suicide), which often follow mild traumatic brain injuries. Brenna is involved in the team’s early proof-of-concept clinical research with active duty and former service members. Her primary focus is the development of a field-deployable electrophysiology (EEG/ECG) system and CNS analysis suite intended for military field use and humanitarian relief.
Brenna graduated with a BS in Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University in 2009 with a concentration in Biomechanics, holding internships at the USDA and University of Pennsylvania. It was during her undergraduate years that she became interested in improving the accessibility of underserved populations to medical care and healthcare technologies. Brenna volunteered in public health centers across Chicago in health education and outreach, and spent a summer serving as a First Responder with the Israeli public ambulance service in Tel Aviv, Israel. She later studied a semester abroad at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, examining the management of biomedical technologies in resource poor environments. Brenna will be beginning medical school in the fall of 2012 at Thomas Jefferson University.

Chris Werner manages the Instrument Design and Fabrication Shared Resource facility for HHMI/Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, VA. He and his team of engineers and technicians collaborate closely with JFRC scientists to co-develop custom instrumentation solutions that enable research to move forward. Chris believes that the synergy between science and engineering can move research faster than ever before. He studied Mechanical Engineering Technology at Central New England College, and Business Management at Northeastern University. He brings 25 years of technology and business development, and engineering management, all within the laboratory automation equipment field. His past experiences include Director of Engineering and QA at ArQule, a drug discovery platform and tools company, and VP of Engineering for Microfluidics Corp, both located in greater Boston. He held positions of increasing responsibility with the Zymark Corporation, which was known as the pioneer in laboratory robotics from the early 80’s. Prior to joining HHMI, Chris was consulting with several pharmaceutical drug discovery and development organizations in the Boston area.

Kristin Jusino has been a part of the Process Biochemistry department at MedImmune for 3 years. She has played a key role in developing several purification processes for the production of antibodies entering phase I clinical trials. Kristin uses her knowledge of different chromatography platforms and filtration systems to effectively design and optimize antibody purification processes that can be used at multiple manufacturing scales. She received her B.S. and M.S. in Biological Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2006 and 2008, respectively.