VR and Healthcare

Vijay Ravindran is the co-founder & CEO of Floreo, a startup building virtual reality autism therapy. In prior roles, he has been the chief digital officer of a major media company, chief executive of a news startup, and co-founder of a political technology company that was active in the 2008 presidential campaign. He started his career as a software engineer and was at Amazon from 1998-2005 in a variety of technology roles. From February 2009 to December 2015, Ravindran was senior vice president and chief digital officer at Graham Holdings Company (formerly The Washington Post Company). In this role, Ravindran most recently was the CEO of a news startup, Trove, and led investments in early stage companies for GHCo. In 2005, Ravindran joined with former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes to launch the political technology startup Catalist. As its founding chief technology officer, Ravindran led all the technology aspects of developing the company’s software and data products. During the 2008 election cycle, Catalist clients included the Obama for America and Hillary Clinton presidential campaigns. Prior to Catalist, Ravindran was a technology director at Amazon.com. Ravindran joined Amazon in 1998 as a software engineer and held a variety of engineering and management roles. From 2003 to 2005, he led the Ordering group, which was responsible for consumer purchasing on all Amazon properties, including Shopping Cart, Checkout, 1-Click and Your Account. In this role, he also oversaw the launch of Amazon Prime and built the original team for the program. Before joining Amazon, Ravindran was a software developer at American Management Systems in Fairfax, VA, and Dusseldorf, Germany. Ravindran graduated from the University of Virginia with a BS in systems engineering.

Chris “The Nerdy Vet” Queen has been a small animal veterinarian since graduating from Bristol Vet School in the UK back in 2007. A self-confessed tech nerd he has always had his finger on the pulse of new technologies and their role in advancing veterinary care and education. Chris was the vet behind the award-winning and first-to-market pet healthcare apps, launched onto the UK Apple App Store (Mucky Pup & Purrfect Paws), and has been blogging on all things nerdy for years. When he is not writing his next book or getting stuck into surgery, he can be found either plugging in to VR or leaping out of a perfectly decent aircraft all in the name of fun.

Dr. Martin serves as a Professor, and the W. Eugene Stern Chairman of Neurosurgery at the UCLA Ronald Reagan Hospital in Los Angeles, California. His additional roles include Co-Director of the UCLA Stroke Center, Medical Director of the Cerebral Blood Flow and TCD Laboratory, and Director of the Aneurysm and AVM program. Dr. Martin specializes in the research and treatment of brain injury and neurovascular disorders, including arteriovenous malformation, aneurysm and stroke. Under Dr. Martin’s leadership, the UCLA Neurovascular Program has become recognized as one of the leading centers in the world for the management of vascular disease of the brain and spinal cord. Over the past twenty years, Dr. Martin and his team have collaborated with colleagues in interventional neuroradiology and stereotactic radiosurgery to treat more than 5,000 patients with central nervous system vascular disorders including aneurysms, arteriovenous malformations, and carotid and intracranial atherosclerosis. Dr. Martin also has a deep interest in advanced computation and digital technologies for performance improvement and quality enhancement in healthcare. He co-founded Global Care Quest (GCQ), and currently serves at its Chief Medical Officer. In this capacity, Dr. Martin provides the expert clinical guidance necessary to ensure that all of the GCQ products are clinically appropriate, highly cognitive, and immediately useful in the “real world” of medicine. The Global Care Quest technologies have been significant contributors to his team’s success.

Walter Greenleaf is a behavioral neuroscientist and a medical product developer working at Stanford University. He has an extensive background in medical virtual reality technology – he is considered one of the leading authorities in the field. Walter Greenleaf has designed and developed numerous clinical product streams over the last twenty-seven years, including products in the fields of: surgical simulation, 3D medical visualization, telerehabilitation, clinical informatics, clinical decision support, point-of-care clinical data collection, ergonomic evaluation technology, automatic sleep-staging systems, psychophysiological assessment, and simulation-assisted rehabilitation technologies, as well as products for behavioral medicine. As a research scientist, Dr. Greenleaf’s focus has been on age-related changes in cognition, mood and behavior. His early research was on age-related changes in the neuroendocrine system and the effects on human behavior. He served as the Director for the Mind Division, Stanford Center on Longevity, where his focus was on age-related changes in cognition. He is currently a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s MediaX Program, a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, and Director of Technology Strategy for the University of Colorado National Behavioral Health Innovation Center. As a medical product developer, Dr. Greenleaf’s focus has been on computer supported clinical products, with a specific focus on virtual reality and digital health technology to treat Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Anxiety Disorders, Traumatic Brain Injury and Stroke, Addictions, Autism, and other difficult problems in behavioral and physical medicine. Dr. Greenleaf founded and served as CEO for: Greenleaf Medical Systems, a business incubator; InWorld Solutions, a company specializing in the therapeutic use of virtual worlds for behavioral health care; and Virtually Better, a company that develops virtual environments for the treatment of phobias, anxiety disorders, and PTSD. In addition to his research at Stanford University, Walter is Chief Science Officer at Pear Therapeutics. He is a co-founder of Virtual Ventures and Cognitive Leap. He is the technology and neuroscience advisor to several VR early-stage companies, including: ObEN, Sixense, VreeMotion, VRecover, and Playing Forward. He advises several venture investment firms and pharmaceutical companies about digital medicine opportunities. He has served as a scientific advisor and grant reviewer for the U.S. Public Health Service, National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), NASA and the U.S. Department of Education. He has served as a Principal Investigator for research grants funded by NIH and NASA. Dr. Greenleaf helped start the California State University Center for Disability Solutions and serves on the Board of Directors for the International Society of Virtual Rehabilitation. Walter Greenleaf has a PhD in Neuro and Bio-behavioral Sciences from Stanford University