Dr. Marras is a pioneer who employs engineering techniques to better understand the causal pathways associated with low back disorder. Over the past 30 years, Professor Marras has developed a strong research foundation that quantifies low back risk exposures and spine tissue loading to understand the complex interactions within the spine. These assessments have resulted in quantifiable measures that describe the extent of low back pain as well as a quantification of the likely source of a low back disorder.

This work has resulted in the development of commercially available assessment tools (lumbar motion monitor or LMM) as well as personalized predictive models that can be used by health professional to better understand the impact of spine treatments for a specific individual. Through these efforts, industry has been able to save million of dollars in injury costs and surgeons have begun to use these techniques to better plan treatments and surgical interventions.

EWI is an international thought leader on materials joining and allied technologies. It uses manufacturing technology innovation to increase the competitiveness of over 1,200 member locations of global leaders in the advanced energy, aerospace, automotive, government/defense, heavy manufacturing, oil and gas, and consumer products industries.

AcousTech Machining combines the company’s unique expertise in high-power ultrasonics with traditional machining operations to significantly increase material removal rates, reduce tool wear, reduce coolant usage, and reduce operating loads. The AcousTech Machining Module employs the use of an acoustically tuned tool holder to transmit 20-kHz vibrations to conventional metalworking tools. A key development of EWI’s AcousTech Machining Module has been the ability to transmit acoustical vibrations through conventional metalworking tools while isolating ancillary vibrations from the machine spindle or structure. Matt Short is well recognized for his diverse background in the fields of ultrasonics, automated system design, tool and die design, and CNC/CAM programming. His expertise has provided distinguishable advantages for EWI’s member companies with the implementation of new technology into production systems.

Nanofiber Solutions is a medical device manufacturer of three-dimensional (3-D) scaffolds and cell culture products that advance biological sciences. These medical devices are based on very small polymer fibers called nanofibers, that are made into synthetic organs and implanted into the body to replace damaged organs.

Jed Johnson designed and built the first in man synthetic nanofiber trachea that has been implanted into four humans across the world, with our first US surgery scheduled to occur in late 2012. This platform technology has proven very successful with the tracheal transplants and we are aggressively applying the nanofiber technology to other areas of medical implants with 8 patent filings in 2012 alone.

We are at the dawn of the era of personalized medicine where our genome sequence will be used to define clinical treatment. Through utilization of state-of-the-art technologies, Dr. White’s team at the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital is capable of sequencing the human genome in days, enabling them to search for the genetic causes of congenital heart disease, muscular dystrophy, autism and rare genetic syndromes. However, the terabytes of data these next-generation sequencers produce has created an informatics bottleneck in which current approaches take months to complete analysis and interpretation. To overcome this “big data” challenge, Dr. White discovered a revolutionary computational approach that enabled development of “Churchill”, genome analysis software that fully automates the genome analysis process. Compared with alternative analysis pipelines, Churchill is more accurate, meets clinical sequencing standards, simple to implement both in-house and on the “Cloud”, and drastically reduces the analysis time from weeks to under two hours. As increasing numbers of molecular diagnostic laboratories implement next generation sequencing in clinical settings, Churchill provides an immediate solution to the data analysis challenges these laboratories face.

Dr. Marashdeh is the cofounder, President & CEO of Tech4Imaging LLC, a start-up Company from The Ohio State University. He currently hold two patents and has published tens of publications related our technology and its applications. His innovation is related to Electrical Capacitance Volume Tomography (ECVT), an imaging technology that can be deployed to various applications. His efforts have revolutionized the field of capacitance tomography as ECVT technique has the potential to revolutionize the energy, aerospace, chemical, and healthcare industries.

He has been involved in every stage of the development and commercialization of electrical capacitance volume tomography. Applications for ECVT include power-plant operations, combustion imaging, and multi-phase flow systems. Tech4Imaging was able to develop a commercial prototype through government grants, and we currently have several ECVT sensors installed at the National Energy Technology Laboratory. Our technology has a global reach that is best demonstrated by sales to Australia and Japan over the past year. ECVT technology and its potential were highlighted recently in a press release from the US Department of Energy.