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STEVEN ARLESS, BSc’71(Chemistry), is a prominent º£½ÇÉçÇø alumnus who returned to his alma mater in the fall of 2016 as Professor of Practice in the Faculty of Medicine (now Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences) in the Department of Surgery’s cutting-edge Surgical Innovation Program. More recently, he joined one of Canada’s fastest growing medical technology accelerators, Centech, as Entrepreneur-in-Residence.

After graduating from º£½ÇÉçÇø, Mr. Arless worked for 17 years at Smith & Nephew Inc., serving as President for close to five years. His experience includes extensive involvement in technology transfer and strategic acquisition projects across the United States and Canada. His innovative talent led him to CryoCath Technologies Inc., a catheter-based cryoablation technology for the treatment of Atrial Fibrillation, which he nurtured from a startup to commercial success, serving as President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) from 1996 to 2006, ultimately selling this to Medtronic Inc. for $400 million. Mr. Arless completed an MBA at Concordia University in 2008. He maintained his interest in the diagnosis of and minimally invasive therapies for rhythm disorders of the heart, assuming the position of CEO of Cleveland-based CardioInsight, from 2009 to 2012, with the Company ultimately being sold to Medtronic for over $100 million.

Mr. Arless is the Co-Founder and past CEO and Chairman of the Board (2015-2019) of Soundbite Medical, a Montreal-based shockwave technology company, also in the field of cardiovascular disease therapy. Most recently, Mr Arless co-Founded and is CEO of ViTAA Medical Solutions Inc., a precision medicine, AI-powered software company for the better management of patients with abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) disease.

His most notable award was Ernst & Young’s 2005 Entrepreneur of the Year in the life science category.

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CARMELA DE LUCA, Ph.D., J.D. is a principal with Smart & Biggar LP. Carmela is a lawyer and registered patent agent in Canada and the United States and practices in all areas of intellectual property, focusing on patent matters, particularly for life science companies. She advises clients on strategic global aspects of obtaining and managing patent portfolios, as well as in the preparation and procurement of patents and industrial designs. She works closely with clients including start-ups, universities as well as multinationals in preparing and prosecuting patent applications relating to biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, biologics, diagnostics, green technologies, and other areas in the life sciences. Carmela is also active in the analysis of patent issues such as validity, infringement, and freedom to operate.

Carmela is the founding and Emeritus Co-chair of the Greater Montréal Chapter of Women in Bio (WIB) and a member of its Excellence in Canadian Board Governance (ECBG) committee. She has been a faculty member of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada's (IPIC) Patent Drafting Course and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Clinical Innovation Platform (CLIP) of the Research Institute of the º£½ÇÉçÇø Health Centre.

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DANNY MINOGUE, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Minogue Medical Inc., is a former elite ski racer and an alumnus of the Alpine Canada Can-Am team in the 1970’s. Mr. Minogue started his career in the surgical supply business in 1981 with US Surgical before founding Minogue Medical Inc. in 1986. With more than three decades of managerial experience in the surgical supply business, he has grown Minogue Medical into one of Canada’s leading distributors of surgical supplies and robotic surgery devices (da Vinci surgical system).

In 2011 & 2013, Mr. Minogue was recognized for his outstanding achievements and nominated as a finalist for Ernst and Young's Entrepreneur of the Year. He also has a strong commitment to community involvement and was elected chairman of the Board of Alpine Canada in September 2011and co-chaired Montreal's 2012 Ride to Conquer Cancer – an event with more than 2,000 participants that raised $7.0 million.

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CHARLES POSTERNACK, Chief Executive Officer at Avulux. After a long, rewarding career as a practicing physician and senior healthcare executive, Dr. Posternack followed his heart to co-found Avulux. His daughters both suffer from light sensitivity and migraine, and he set out to find an option that would help them. Today, those same women are two of the many Avulux success stories from around the world. Dr. Posternack has been in the healthcare sector for more than 30 years, with leadership positions in both the not-for-profit and for-profit sectors. Dr. Posternack received his medical degree at º£½ÇÉçÇø in Montreal, Canada, and did his specialty training there as well. He has lived in the United States since 1992 and has held senior roles at the Cleveland Clinic and HCA Healthcare, as well as overseeing a large multi-state U.S. healthcare system. He was also an Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University.

SIMON RAAB, PhD, holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from º£½ÇÉçÇø (Montreal) a Master of Engineering Physics (Surface Physics) from Cornell University, USA, and a Bachelor of Science in Physics from the University of Waterloo, Canada. After receiving permission from Mcgill’s board of trustees, Raab licensed Bristol Myers subsidiary Zimmer Inc. with the results of his PhD thesis introducing important technology in artificial joint fixation. This event inspired important positive developments in º£½ÇÉçÇø’s industrial relations policies. Raab is the co-founder of Faro Technologies where he was CEO for 26 years and chairman of the board for 37 years. Raab took FARO public on the Nasdaq exchange in 1997, where is it still active. Raab holds more than 80 US patents with associated foreign patents in fields of 3D coordinate measuring systems, bio-materials, medical diagnostics and computerized surgical assistance. Faro licensed Medtronics and BrainLabs with Raab’s patents on image guided surgery, which continue to set the standard of care in Neuro and ENT surgery. He has invested in diverse startups acting both as scientific advisor and board chairman, these include LunglifeAI focusing on diagnostic tests for early lung cancer and Digital Surgical Systems, developing the first digital 3D surgical microscopes and robotic guidance systems. Raab is currently retired and is working in his first passion, physics and is completing a book describing a new string theory.

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ALEXANDRE BARIL is a partner in Deloitte Montréal office and the Canadian Leader of the M&A Transaction Services practice. He has 31 years of experience, including 27 years in financial and operational studies prior to acquisitions (due diligence), strategic development, business valuation and financial advisory services in mergers and acquisitions for privately-held and publicly-traded corporations for strategic buyers and private equity funds. He worked 30 months at Deloitte’s offices in London, England. He returned to Deloitte following 3-½ years working in the M&A group of Bell Canada, Canada’s largest telecommunication company where he was involved in acquisitions, divestitures, alliance projects, VC type investments, a major restructuring and the $51.6B privatization project.

He also ran the Corporate Development Office for Deloitte’s own acquisitions, alliances, international investments and divestitures for five years between 2013 and 2019 where the Canadian firm undertook 23 acquisitions and 44 transactions (alliances, team hires, etc.)He has presented at numerous conferences and is co-author of a 163 page guide on diligence. He has been involved in many disputes covering working capital, net asset or earn-out negotiations and / or disagreements. He concentrates his efforts on TMT (technology, media and telecommunications) and professional services transactions.

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FRANK BAYLIS is the Executive Chairman of Baylis Medical Technologies, a leading medical device company specializing in interventional radiology and neurology. From 2015 to 2019, he served as the Liberal Member of Parliament for the federal riding of Pierrefonds-Dollard, contributing to the Industry, Foreign Affairs, and Ethics & Privacy Committees. Before his time in Parliament, Frank Baylis was President of Baylis Medical Company from 1989 to 2015, during which the company became a global leader in developing medical devices for interventional cardiology and pain management. Baylis holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo.

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MERYEME LAHMANI is an investor at Pender Ventures, where she focuses on health technology and B2B software. She brings a combination of operating and investing experience, having co-founded a venture-backed healthtech startup and led investments in biotech, enterprise software, and digital health at BDC Capital. She began her venture career at a healthtech-focused fund and started her professional journey in consulting. Meryeme holds an MBA from Université Laval. She is actively involved in the venture and healthcare ecosystem as a mentor with Front Row Ventures and The Forum, a member of industry associations including CVCA and Réseau Capital, and an investment committee member of MEDTEQ+ and the º£½ÇÉçÇø General Hospital Foundation.

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DAN RODEN grew up in Montreal and received his medical degree and trained in Internal Medicine at º£½ÇÉçÇø. He then went to Vanderbilt where, after fellowships in Clinical Pharmacology and Cardiology, he joined the faculty. His research program studies how genetic variation affects human disease susceptibility, and his special interests are pharmacogenetics, and the genetic determinants of abnormal heart rhythms, especially those induced by drugs. He has been Principal Investigator on NIH awards continuously since 1984. After serving as chief of the division of Clinical Pharmacology for 12 years, he was tasked in 2006 with leading Vanderbilt’s efforts in Personalized Medicine. Under his leadership, Vanderbilt has become internationally-recognized for cutting edge programs in this area, including the large EHR-linked biobank BioVU (>310,000 samples with whole genome sequence data) and the EHR-based preemptive pharmacogenetic program PREDICT. He served as Principal Investigator for the Vanderbilt site of the Pharmacogenomics Research Network (2001-2021), and currently serves as co-PI for the Vanderbilt site of the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) Network, the NHGRI’s genomic Learning Healthcare System network, and the Data and Research Center for the US NIH All of Us program. He has served as primary mentor for 60 MD and/or PhD graduate students and post-doctoral fellows; over half hold appointments in academic departments in the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Australia, and Taiwan; 5 currently serve as deans, department chairs, or division directors. Dr. Roden has received multiple awards including º£½ÇÉçÇø’s Alumnus Lifetime Achievement Award and º£½ÇÉçÇø’s Louis and Artur Lucian Award in Cardiovascular Research.

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HANNAH DERUEÌýis a PhD candidate in Neuroscience at º£½ÇÉçÇø’s Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain (AECRP). Inspired by her own experience living with chronic pain, Hannah built Doloris (formerly Pain+) for women, a historically under researched population in chronic pain research. Doloris is a web-based platform using linguistic analysis to better understand chronic pain and enable more personalized care. She is the inaugural recipient of the Raab Student Innovation Prize at last year’s CLIC competition.