2023 Leveraging SBIR/STTR Investments

Aimee Garza, BS ECE, MBA
Founder & CEO, CoraVie Medical, Inc.

Ms. Garza is a medical device entrepreneur with 27 years of experience in the Medtech industry across multiple functions with advancing leadership responsibilities. She is currently the founder and CEO of CoraVie Medical, Inc., a medical device startup transforming the way blood pressure is monitored for individuals at risk of a stroke, heart disease, or kidney failure.

Brian Brockway
President and CEO, VivaQuant, Inc.

Brian is a serial entrepreneur that has extensively leveraged the SBIR program to bring ideas out of the lab and into commercialization. Brian started his career at CPI (now part of Boston Scientific) doing chip and algorithm design. He founded Data Sciences Intl, bootstrapping the company into a highly profitable business with $20m in revenue with SBIR funding (sold to Harvard Biosciences). He was a co-founder of Transoma Medical (sold to Greatbatch) and is currently CEO of VivaQuant, a commercial-stage rapidly growing provider of remote cardiac monitoring services.

Demi Radeva
Chief Strategy & Operations Officer, XanthosHealth

Demi Radeva is Chief Strategy & Operations Officer at XanthosHealth. In this role, she is leading the commercialization efforts of the business. She is holds a BSc from the University of Minnesota in Finance, an MSc from London School of Economics in International Health Policy, and is a graduate of Stanford’s Full-Time Executive Education Program on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

She is an active mentor for the University of Minnesota’s Technology Commercialization Venture Center, Board Member at a local non-profit, and winner of the prestigious TechStars Mentor of the Year Award 2021.
As CEO, an adjunct at a Big 10 university, a digital health tech ambassador, and former intrapreneur at a Fortune 5 healthcare company, Demi is committed to helping the healthcare industry get closer to achieving the Triple Aim (improving the experience of care, improving the health of populations, while lowering the total cost of care).

Ping Yeh
CEO, VOCxi Health

Ping Yeh is CEO of Vocxi Health, a spin out from the University of Minnesota and Boston Scientific.  Vocxi Health has developed a breath diagnostic device that measures the presence of disease from one minute of breathing.  Ping is a serial entrepreneur who previously founded StemoniX, a drug discovery platform company that industrialized human brains from skin.  Ping serves on the boards of Oncodea, LifeBridge, and Vyant Bio and volunteers on the boards of Medical Alley and the University of California, San Diego.

Pat Dillon
President, MNSBIR, Inc.

Pat Dillon is the Founder and President of MNSBIR, Inc., a private, non-profit organization to support startups and small businesses to research, develop and commercialize technologies into novel products and services for domestic and global markets by leveraging federal research and development investments from the federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs.