Earlier career — start-up & R&D

Veryan Medical Ltd. — Galway, Ireland

First full-time employee of Veryan Medical, a venture-capital-backed medical-device start-up spun out of Imperial College London on the pioneering work of Professor Colin Caro. Built out the company in Galway, Ireland — leveraging the region's world-class MedTech hub — to develop a highly novel helical peripheral artery stent, the first of its kind for the treatment of superficial femoral artery disease. Under the guidance of serial MedTech entrepreneurs Paul Gilson and Chas Taylor, built up the R&D team and took the flagship BioMimics stent through to CE Mark approval. The company now employs over 200 people and was subsequently acquired by Otsuka Medical (Japan).

• Joined as the first full-time employee and built up the R&D organisation from the ground up; the company now employs 200+ people.
• Assembled and led a team of seven R&D engineers (Masters and PhD level), applying state-of-the-art finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamics to stent design.
• Helped the company achieve CE Mark for its flagship product, the BioMimics helical peripheral artery stent — the first of its kind for superficial femoral artery disease.
• Responsible for IP portfolio management and manufacturing up to CE Mark approval.
• Devised a novel IP strategy to secure freedom to operate: rather than competing on incremental tweaks to curve radii (as competitors did), reframed the problem and leveraged expired prior-art IP — a solution no one else in the field had conceived.
• Contributed to building the company to the point of acquisition by Otsuka Medical (Japanese medical-device company).

Biocompatibles Cardiovascular Ltd. — U.K.

Joined Biocompatibles Cardiovascular to deepen specialisation in finite element analysis, arriving as the company prepared an IDE submission to the FDA for its flagship coronary stent. Identified and corrected a fundamental flaw in the company's externally produced fatigue analysis that had stalled the submission for nearly a year, then proved the design safe through physical testing — directly enabling Biocompatibles to become the first European company to receive PMA clearance to market a coronary stent in the USA.

• On joining, reviewed externally generated FEA data and identified that the consultant had used Von Mises stresses rather than principal stresses for the fatigue analysis — the root cause of the flagship stent appearing to fail both FEA and fatigue tests, which had delayed the IDE submission by nearly 12 months.
• Reproduced the analysis and re-plotted the S–N diagram using principal stresses, demonstrating the design was in fact robust; validated the approach with Prof. David Taylor (Trinity College Dublin), an internationally respected mechanical-fatigue expert.
• Persuaded management to bring testing in-house: procured a stent fatigue tester and proved the design safe through physical testing to 200 million pulsatile cycles.
• As a direct result, Biocompatibles proceeded with the IDE submission and became the first European-based company to receive FDA PMA clearance to market a coronary stent in the USA.
• Exposure to the Oxford-educated PhD scientists working on the stent-coating technology sparked a fascination with biology that led to a Masters offer at Imperial College London — which Biocompatibles part-funded in recognition of his contribution.
• On the strength of this work, serial MedTech entrepreneur Paul Gilson asked him to join Mednova (Gilson's first start-up, later acquired by Abbott Laboratories); respectfully declined, having already committed to the Imperial Masters and rented out his house.

Medtronic Inc. — Ireland

First role after graduating in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Limerick. Began at C.R. Bard Ltd. as a co-op student — returning for summer work and completing the final-year project there — and was offered and accepted a full-time R&D position on graduation. Shortly afterwards C.R. Bard was acquired by Arterial Vascular Engineering (AVE) Inc., and subsequently by Medtronic Inc. After two years moved into specialising in finite element analysis (FEA) of implantable devices, specifically coronary stents.

• Joined as a co-op student, was re-hired for summer work, completed the final-year project at C.R. Bard, and converted to a full-time R&D engineer on graduation.
• Continued through the C.R. Bard → AVE → Medtronic acquisitions.
• After two years, specialised in finite-element analysis of implantable devices, focusing on coronary stents — the start of the FEA expertise that defined the next decade of his medical-device career.