Dr. Joshua Makower is the Boston Scientific Applied Biomedical Engineering Professor and the Director of the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign, the program he co-founded with Dr. Paul Yock twenty years ago. Dr. Makower helped create the fundamental structure of the Center’s core curriculum and is the chief architect of what is now called “The Biodesign Process.” Over the past 20 years since Drs. Makower and Yock founded Biodesign, this curriculum and the associated textbook has been used at Stanford and across the world to train hundreds of thousands of students, faculty and industry leaders on the Biodesign process towards the advancement of medical innovation for the improvement of patient care. Dr. Makower has practiced these same techniques directly as the Founder & Executive Chairman of ExploraMed, a medical device incubator, creating 9 companies since 1995. Transactions from the ExploraMed portfolio include NeoTract, acquired by Teleflex, Acclarent, acquired by J&J, EndoMatrix, acquired by C.R. Bard & TransVascular, acquired by Medtronic. Other ExploraMed/NEA ventures include Moximed, NC8 and Willow.

Dr. Makower is also a Special Partner at NEA, where he will continue to support their healthcare team and medtech/healthtech investing practice. He serves on the board of Allay Therapeutics, NC8, Setpoint Medical, DOTS Technologies, Eargo, ExploraMed, Intrinsic Therapeutics, Moximed, Willow and Coravin. Dr. Makower holds over 300 patents and patent applications. He received an MBA from Columbia University, an MD from the NYU School of Medicine, a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. He is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering and the College of Fellows of The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and was awarded the Coulter Award for Healthcare Innovation by the Biomedical Engineering Society in 2018.