NovaVision, Inc. Scientific & Medical Board of Advisors - An Eminent Group of Leaders from Respected Institutions

Dr. Louis R. Caplan is Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Chief of Division of Cerebrovascular Disease at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

In 1978, he moved to Chicago to become Neurologist-in-chief at the Michael Reese Hospital and Professor of Neurology at the University of Chicago. There he continued his work on stroke and became interested in racial differences in stroke subtypes and vascular lesions. He returned to Boston in 1984 to become Neurologist-in-chief at the New England Medical Center and Professor and Chairman of the Department of Neurology and Professor of Medicine at Tufts. In 1998 he returned to the Beth Israel Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Caplan is a member of many professional societies, including serving as an officer on several committees for the American Heart Association. He has served on editorial boards for professional journals since the 1980s. He has been an invited lecturer at many hospitals, universities and societies throughout the United States and internationally. He has authored or co-authored more than 130 articles and reports, more than 400 chapters and reviews, and 25 books.

Dr. Andrew Firlik is currently a Clinical Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at New York University School of Medicine and is an attending neurosurgeon at the Manhattan VA Harbor Healthcare System affiliated with the New York University Medical Center.

Andrew studied biology at Cornell University and Oxford University, received his MBA from the Katz Graduate School of Business, and his MD from Cornell University Medical College.

Andrew has been in the health care profession for 12 years during his training and practice as a neurological surgeon. He has published more than 50 articles in the medical literature, written chapters for several medical textbooks, filed patents on several inventions, and is the co-editor of a book about cerebrovascular surgery.

In 2005, Andrew joined Foundation Medical Partners as a General partner, where he concentrates on medical device and biopharmaceutical investments. He also co-founded LaunchCyte, a healthcare seed stage investor and business accelerator and recently held the position of venture partner with the Sprout Group. Prior to Sprout, he was a principal at Canaan Partners where he concentrated on life science investments. While at Canaan, Andrew invested in and served on the board of directors of several companies, including Viacor, Transoma Medical, Omnisonics, IntelliCare, and SpineWave. Prior to his involvement with Canaan Partners, he was a co-founder and principal of Cortex Consulting, where he served as a consultant to Mayfield Fund and several early-stage healthcare companies. He is a co-founder and scientific advisory board member of Northstar Neuroscience, a medical device company in Seattle.

In addition to serving as the Chairman of the Board of NovaVision’s Board of Directors and a member of NovaVision\'s Scientific and Medical Advisory Board, Andrew also observes on the board of directors of Northstar Neuroscience.

Alvaro Pascual-Leone, M.D., Ph.D. is the Director of the Center for Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation and Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Boston, MA, USA). He holds appointments as Adjunct Professor in Psychiatry and Neurobiology at Boston University, and in Cognitive Neuroscience at the Faculty of Arts and Science at Harvard University. Currently, he is also the Associate Director of the Harvard-Thorndike General Clinical Research Center and council member of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping.

Dr. Pascual-Leone is Board Certified in Neurology and Neurophysiology by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, member of multiple professional societies and the recipient of several honors and awards, including the Ramon y Cajal Award in Neuroscience (Spain), the Norman Geschwind Prize in Behavioral Neurology from the American Academy of Neurology, the Daniel D. Federman Outstanding Clinical Educator Award from the Harvard Medical School, and the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany).

Dr. Pascual-Leone’s major areas of research interest are the physiology of higher cognitive functions and the pathophysiology of neuropsychiatric disorders, with a focus on the dynamic modification of brain function across the lifespan (Neural Plasticity), and the possibility of neuromodulation by brain stimulation techniques. He is the author of more than 200 papers in refereed professional journals, more than 50 book chapters, and two books.

Dr. Misha Pless is neuro-ophthalmologist currently working on neuro-ophthalmology, multiple sclerosis, and general neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital. In addition, Dr. Pless is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. He was formally an Associate Professor of Neurology and Ophthalmology at the University of Pittsburgh, and practiced with the Northeast Health System.

Dr. Pless was a Woodruff Scholar at Emory University School of Medicine, where he received his M.D., and he completed a medical internship at Massachusetts General Hospital and a neurology residency at the Harvard-Longwood Neurology Training Program of Boston. He subsequently joined Dr. Simmons Lessell in specialty training in neuro-ophthalmology at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Boston. Before joining the University of Pittsburgh, he served as full-time faculty at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Dr. Pless is certified by the National Board of Medical Examiners and is a board-certified member of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, M.D., Ph.D. is Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, a professor with the Psychology Department and the Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego, as well as an Adjunct Professor of Biology at the Salk Institute. Dr. Ramachandran is trained as a Physician and obtained an M.D. from Stanley Medical College and subsequently a Ph.D. from Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, where he was elected a senior Rouse Ball Scholar. Named by Newsweek as one of the 100 most important people to watch in the next century, he has received numerous awards, including the Ariens-Kappers Medal from the Netherlands, a Gold Medal from the Australian National University, and a fellowship from All Souls College, Oxford.

Dr. Ramachandran’s early research was on visual perception but he is best known for his extensive research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral neurology—the study of cognitive and perceptual deficits in human neurological patients, neural plasticity and "phantom limbs", stroke rehabilitation, human visual perception/cognition, and visual psychophysics. In addition, Dr. Ramachandran is Editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Human Behaviour and author of the critically acclaimed book Phantoms in the Brain, which has been translated into eight languages.

Dr. Carla Shatz is Professor of Biology and Neurobiology and Director of Bio-X, an Institute at Stanford facilitating interdisciplinary research at the intersections of Life and Medical Sciences, Engineering, and other quantitative sciences. She received her B.A. in Chemistry from Radcliffe College in 1969 and a Ph.D. in Neurobiology from Harvard Medical School in 1976.

Dr. Shatz is a past president of the 36,000 member Society for Neuroscience; she was Chairwoman of the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School (2000-2007), and has served on the Council of the National Academy of Sciences (1998-2001).

The major goal of research in the Shatz Laboratory is to understand cellular and molecular mechanisms that transform early fetal and neonatal brain circuits into mature connections, and to determine the extent to which brain function during critical periods of development is needed for these circuits to tune up into adult patterns of connectivity. Her discoveries have gained her numerous honors, including election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Institute of Medicine. http://www.stanford.edu/group/shatzlab/

Norman J. Schatz, M.D., has earned an international reputation for his pioneering work in Neuro-ophthalmology. In Philadelphia for 20 years, he was Director of the Neuro-Ophthalmology Unit at the Wills Eye Hospital, and continues as Adjunct Professor in Ophthalmology and Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Schatz has been a Clinical Professor of Neuro-Ophthalmology at the University of Miami School of Medicine for 12 years.

Dr. Schatz has written more than 140 journal articles and lectured in North America, Europe, South America, Australia, and Asia. He serves on the editorial staff of several scientific journals. Dr. Schatz received the Senior Honor Award from the American Academy of Ophthalmology in 1993. A graduate of Hahnemann Medical College, he served his internship at Albert Einstein Medical Center and his residency at Jefferson Medical Center in Philadelphia. Dr. Schatz received fellowships at Wills Eye Hospital and Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.