Dr. Stefan Larson
Stefan Larson brings a unique combination of scientific expertise and business acumen to the leadership of Tornado. Prior to joining Tornado, he was an Associate Principal at McKinsey & Company, the world’s premier management consultancy, where he served as a trusted advisor to senior executives and boards at some of North America’s most prominent organizations. His professional practice included medical devices, biotechnology, and advanced energy technologies. Dr. Larson studied at McGill and the University of Toronto before completing his doctoral research in Biophysics at the Stanford School of Medicine as the James H. Clark Graduate Fellow. He is a former Governor of the University of Toronto and member of its Business Board.
Dr. Arsen Hajian
Arsen Hajian has been designing and building high-performance optical interferometric instruments for over 15 years. He is on the faculty of the Department of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. His specialty is the design and fabrication of novel imaging and spectroscopy solutions for a variety of fields, primarily focused on medical applications. He is also an internationally recognized scientist in the field of astronomy and astrophysics. Dr. Hajian completed his undergraduate at MIT and received his doctorate from Cornell University.
Mr. Mark Watson
Mark Watson has over 25 years of experience in high-tech and medical device product development. At MR Instruments, Mark Watson led the company (most recently as Managing Director) from its inception in 2002 to become a leading manufacturer of RF coils and hardware for medical imaging OEMs. He developed the company’s Quality Management Systems, obtaining ISO 13485 and FDA approval, was responsible for designing and releasing several new products, including in vivo medical RF coils for clinical MRI systems, and was instrumental in developing the necessary design verification and validation data and test reports required to support numerous FDA and CE Class II Product Submissions.
Mr. Brian McDonald
Brian McDonald is a chartered accountant, and has held senior finance positions at a number of rapidly growing early stage technology companies. Brian has spent several years designing financial systems and controls for “start-ups” to manage aggressive growth and promote effective decision making, including one which grew to over 200 employees and sold for over $200 million after approximately 5 years of operation. He holds an MBA, with distinction, from York University’s Schulich School of Business.
Mr. Bill O’Reilly
Bill O’Reilly has spent over a decade in engineering and sales roles in the medical device industry. As Manager of Business Development at Mercury Computer Systems, he led a $20 million/year sales program and received approval in 2009 for a $100 million MRI business expansion. He has deep experience in high performance, low latency medical imaging and computing as well as industry-leading RF design specific to MRI. His experience has broad clinical relevance, successfully bringing products to market following FDA and EU directives. Mr. O’Reilly has a BS degree in Biomedical/Electrical Engineering from Marquette University. His graduate work at Marquette and the Medical College of Wisconsin focused on the optimization of medical imaging reconstruction techniques.
Dr. Frédéric Sweeney
Frédéric Sweeney joined Tornado Medical Systems from the life sciences investment team of one of Canada’s premier venture capital and private equity firms. He holds a Ph.D in Molecular and Medical Genetics from the University of Toronto where he was a Terry Fox Scholar of the National Cancer Institute of Canada.
Dr. Simon Alexander
Simon Alexander studied physics & mathematics at the University of Victoria, and his graduate degrees are in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo, where he focused on problems in image processing and image representation. He held an NSERC post-doctoral fellowship in Texas where he collaborated with world class research teams located in the Houston Medical center. He has broad industry and academic experience in image analysis, image processing, and the design and implementation of high performance computational systems.
Dr. Thas Yuwaraj, PEng
Thas Yuwaraj has over 15 years of experience in the medical device industry and managed the development of medical devices through 510k and PMA pathways with the US FDA. Prior to joining Tornado Medical Systems, he has held a number of senior positions in Fortune500 and early stage companies overseeing the development of medical devices from research concepts. He has also played a vital role in establishing ISO13485 compliant product realization processes that paved the way for obtaining CE marking for a number of medical devices. Dr. Yuwaraj holds a Doctoral degree in Biomedical Engineering from University of Toronto.
