Meet The Team
Prakash Thakur
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Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CEO
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Prakash has 15+ years of experience in a diverse areas of biomedical technologies & business consulting in both academic/industrial settings with prior startup experiences in emerging technologies in healthcare & biotech.
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With advanced graduate degrees in biomedical, technology innovation followed by an MBA, Prakash has led and mentored interdisciplinary teams of engineers and business development professionals in a variety of roles, including strategy consulting for tech startups, innovation management, R&D, market/equity research and industry trend analysis for early and growth stage companies. He has been consulting for several startups in both Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh.
Prakash has been invited speakers in various international conferences across Asia, Europe and Americas and exhibits strong intercultural empathy and servant-leadership skills. He has authored more than 30 articles in original research, conference papers, book chapters and business case studies. He is a nominated lifetime member of the international BGS business honors society for outstanding scholarly achievements in business and an elected member at Sigma Xi. Invited as peer-reviewer for several science/business journals, he also serves as Award Judge/Co-Chairs for student-led technological innovations at the international stage, including Intel-ISEF, IEEE-Ro-Man conferences and hackathons.​
His passion and hobbies include international travel, exploring nature & wildlife, culture, eco-conscious lifestyle, health & wellness, yoga and meditation.
Dr. Ker-Jiun Wang
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Co-Founder & CTO
Co-Founder & CTO
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Ker-Jiun (KennyG) brings over 12 years of experience in a wide spectrum of engineering subjects, including mechanical, electrical, computer and biomedical engineering.
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He holds an MS degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) from Carnegie Mellon University and a PhD in Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to coming to the USA, he was a full-time lecturer at the National Taiwan University, Taipei, from which he had graduated with BS in Mechanical Engineering.
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Ker-Jiun has authored more than 15 articles/conference papers in his areas of research that include Human-Robot Interaction, Automatic Control, Machine-Learning, Brain-Computer Interface and Wearable Devices development. He serves as several IEEE international conferences & workshops (RO-MAN, ROBIO, ICIT) session co-chairs, and is a Judge of high school science fairs in City of Pittsburgh (PRESEF, PJAS, Intel ISEF).
Ker-Jiun has won several awards throughout his academic career, including AAAS/Science Program for Excellence in Science (Swanson School of Engineering); 1st Prize by Intelligent Robotics Control Engineer Academy (Taiwan); 1st Prize in Brain-Computer Interface Hackathon (IEEE-SMC); and 1st prize at the Chinese Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition (North America, New York Division).
Ker-Jiun is passionate about emerging technologies in BCI, teaching engineering students at all levels, world traveling, hiking, camping and playing basketball.
Dr. Caroline Zheng
Chief Designer
Chief, Product Design
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Caroline is a designer at the intersection of fashion, soft robotics, human-computer interaction(HCI) and experience design.
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Her design practice explores how wearable technology and the aesthetics of materiality could be reconciled for technological artefacts to foster emotionally rich sensory experience. She integrates creative and fashion practices with the design and realisation of affective interactions. She is passionate in creating personalized, emotionally intelligent robotics and sentimental machines. Using co-design and speculative design she also investigates the social impact of affective technologies.
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Her entrepreneurial experience includes a recently awarded grant from MedTech Super Connector (Research England) to translate her research prototype into commercially viable product and service. The applications include mental health and improving patient comfort in cancer treatment.
Trained in ESMOD Paris for fashion design and pattern cutting, she holds an MA in Fashion Futures from London College of Fashion. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art, in Information Experience Design (IED) and Fashion.
Her work and workshops have been at the V&A Museum, Vogue and Vice media, London Design Festival, STATE of Emotion Festival Berlin, Athens Digital Art Festival, and Manchester Science Festival, the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, among others.
Advisors & Mentors
We are thankful to the professors from the bioengineering department of the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University for their technical advisory throughout the development of this project. The help on medical advisory from neuroscientists and physicians at UPMC were extremely helpful in shaping the medical use cases of our Brain-tech projects. Special thanks to the business mentors at Pitt Innovation Institute, CMU Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, Project Olympus, NSF I-Corps, Innovation Works, AlphaLabGear, Boomtown Accelerators, CableLabs and Comcast Labs.
Staff & Interns
We are thankful to our past and current engineering staff and student interns who have championed many of their work with passion and conviction.
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Hsiao-Wei Tung, MS (Computer Engineering), Machine Learning
Soumya Vhasure, BS (Bioengineering)
Fangyi Chen, MS (Electrical & Computer Engineering)
Shengyue Huo, MS (Computer Engineering)
Kaiwen You, MS (Electrical & Computer Engineering)
Quanbo Liu, MS (Electrical & Computer Engineering)
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