Daniel L. Farkas, PhD
SMI Founder, SMI Director, Chairman and CEO of parent Cascade Technologies Corp.

Daniel L. Farkas was trained in Theoretical Physics in Romania, and holds a Ph.D. in Biophysics and Biochemistry from the Weizmann Institute in Israel, where he received a number of honors (Yashinsky Outstanding Graduate Student Prize, EMBO and UNESCO fellowships, Aharon Katchalsky-Katzir Award). He came to the United States as a Fulbright scholar (also holding a Dr. Chaim Weizmann fellowship), conducted research at UC San Diego and Univ. of Washington, Seattle, and was also a Fulbright lecturer at UC Berkeley. After junior faculty appointments in the US and at the Weizmann Institute, he settled at Carnegie Mellon University as Associate Director and then Director of the Center for Light Microscope Imaging and Biotechnology (1992-2002), a National Science and Technology Center that won the Smithsonian Award for Science in 1996. Simultaneously, at the University of Pittsburgh he was Professor Bioengineering and Pathology, Director of the BioImaging Laboratories, and held core faculty appointments in the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the Univ. of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. Additionally, he served (1995-2005) as Associate Director of the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative, a regional non-profit organization, recently named the National Tissue Engineering Center. In 2002 he came, as Vice-chairman for Research in the Department of Surgery, to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he was also (till July 1, 2010) Director of the Minimally Invasive Surgical Technologies Institute and Professor of Surgery and Biomedical Sciences. Currently, on the academic side, he is Research Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the Univ. of Southern California; Adjunct Professor of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University; and Visiting Professor at the Beckman Institute, California Institute of Technology. He published 160 articles and authored/edited 18 books, is on 11 journal editorial boards, chaired 25 international conferences and had $60 million in peer-reviewed funding to support his research for which he was awarded the Automated Imaging Association Award for Scientific Application (1994) and the Sylvia Sorkin Greenfield Award from the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (2002). In 2008 he was elected President of IMLAS, an international interdisciplinary surgical society. Dr. Farkas also founded a number of successful high-tech startups, including ChromoDynamics, Inc. and TissueInformatics, Inc. He is currently founder and chairman of Spectral Molecular Imaging, Inc., EpiLumina, Inc., PhotoNanoscopy, Inc. and The Brain Window, Inc., and is actively focusing on their development. Having lived in several countries, he has 3 citizenships (including US), and is fluent in 5 languages.
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Erik H. Lindsley, PhD
SMI President

Dr. Lindsley is a biomedical engineer with 8 years of bioimaging experience, primarily in medical devices, including their development and surgical applications. Additionally, he has 10 years of professional computer programming and 3 years of telecommunication engineering experience, as well as extensive knowledge with medical endoscopes, cancer research, and augmented reality for hospital operating rooms. He has significant insight into medical instrumentation and regulations, and medical information systems, and possesses deep cross-functional experience in computer science and electrical engineering. Dr. Lindsley received his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the Univ. of Pittsburgh in 2005. Prior to his actual award date, he did post-doctoral work in the Spectral Visualization Laboratory at the Robotics Institute Carnegie Melon Univ. prior to joining the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in 2005.
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Achilles S. Demetriou, M.D., Ph.D.
Advisor

Dr. Demetriou is the Chairman of SMI’s Scientific Advisory Board. He is the President of University Hospital Health Systems in Cleveland, Ohio. Previously, he was Chairman, Department of Surgery, and the Esther and Mark Shulman Chair in Surgery and Transplantation Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, in Los Angeles, California. A pioneer in the development of the bioartificial liver, Dr. Demetriou served as Director of Cedars-Sinai’s Liver Support Unit. He also served as Professor of Surgery at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine and was Vice-Chairman of the school’s Department of Surgery. Dr. Demetriou received his medical degree from Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem, Israel, and completed a surgical residency at Albert Einstein College of Medicine-Bronx Municipal Hospital Center. He earned his doctorate in biochemistry from George Washington University; and completed a surgical residency at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Affiliated Hospitals. Among his appointments, he was a member of the Marion Bessin Liver Research Center at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the Paul W. Sanger Chair in Surgery at Vanderbilt, and Director of the S.R. Light Surgical Research Laboratory at Vanderbilt.
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George Berci, M.D.
Advisor

Dr. Berci is considered a true pioneer in the field of modern endoscopy. He introduced Diagnostic and Theraputic Laparoscopy in Gynecology, established Modern Endourology, Diagnostic Laparoscopy in Oncology, and Intra-Operative Biliary Endoscopy in Stone Disease. He also introduced Cholangiography in the operating rooms and Operativ Laryngology as well as Outpatient Laryngoscopy. After the opening of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, he organized the GI endoscopy unit and started the CSMC Division of Surgical Endoscopy. In 2002, CSMC received sponsorship ($1.5 million) for the “Dr. Berci Chair in Minimally Invasive Surgery.” Dr. Berci’s awards include the Glisson Prize in surgery and membership in both the Royal College of Surgeons Edinburgh and in the American College of Surgeons. He is past President of the Society of GI Endoscopy Surgeons, an organization with 4,000 Board-certified Surgeons. Dr. Berci has published 250+ papers in peer-reviewed journals, as well as 11 Books, 26 videos, and numerous lectures at national and international forums. He retired in 1992 but remained as Senior Director in Surgical Endoscopy Research at CSMC, supported by external grants.
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Irving Bigio, Ph.D.
Advisor

Dr. Bigio is an internationally recognized leader in biomedical spectroscopy and devices. He is Professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University, where he is also Director of the Biomedical Optics Laboratory. He was recently inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. His research interests include medical applications of optics, lasers, and spectroscopy; biomedical optics and biophotonics; applied spectroscopy, especially to biomedical problems; advanced spectroscopy for tissue diagnosis; noninvasive measurement of drug concentrations in tissue; interstitial laser thermotherapy and photodynamic therapy; computational methods for modeling optical transport in tissue; and multi-capability endoscopic and laparoscopic instruments.
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