MICHAEL L. WEINER

The Technology Review article Defibrillation's Alternative: A new approach would stop ventricular fibrillation before it started said

Treating a failing heart by zapping it with a painful, powerful electrical shock has become the standard procedure. Now, a medical device company, based in West Henrietta, NY, has patented a technique that avoids the need for such dramatic treatment, by predicting the onset of fibrillation — the heart rhythm that can lead to sudden death — and treating it before it occurs.

The preventative treatment does, like defibrillation, involve electrically stimulating the heart, says Michael Weiner, CEO of Biophan Technologies. But this new technique's weak signal would be minuscule compared to the jolt that defibrillators normally deliver. "I know patients with defibrillators who live in fear of that son-of-a-gun going off", he says.

Michael L. Weiner began his career at Xerox Corporation in 1975, where he served in a variety of capacities in sales and marketing, including manager of software market expansion and manager of sales compensation planning. In 1982, he received the President's Award, the top honor at Xerox for an invention benefiting a major product line. In 1985, he founded Microlytics, a Xerox spin-off company which developed technology from the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) into a suite of products, including the award winning Word Finder thesaurus, with licenses out to over 150 companies, including Apple, Microsoft, and Sony. Microlytics was acquired by a merger with a public company in 1990, which he then headed up through 1993.

In January 1993, Mike cofounded TextWise, a company developing natural language search technologies for the intelligence community. In 1995, he cofounded and served as CEO of Manning & Napier Information Services (MNIS), a Rochester-based company providing parent analytics, prior art searches, and other services, for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and many large corporations, and which subsequently acquired TextWise. He held this position until January 1999. MNIS remains private, and has generated several spin-off companies (Talavara and IP.COM). TextWise won the Department of Commerce Tibbetts Award for SBIR research in 1998.

In February 1999, Mike founded Technology Innovations, LLC, to develop intellectual property assets. In August 2000, Technology Innovations created a subsidiary, Biomed Solutions, LLC, to pursue biomedical and nanotechnology opportunities, investing in embryonic-to-seed stage innovations which generate new ventures and/or licenses. These companies are holding companies for intellectual property assets and equities in other ventures.

He has been CEO of Biophan Technologies, Inc. (Ray Kurzweil is on its Scientific Advisory Board!) since cofounding the company in December 2000, with Wilson Greatbatch, P.E., the inventor of the first successful implantable cardiac pacemaker, which Greatbatch licensed to Medtronic in 1960. Biophan's primary mission is to develop and commercially exploit technologies for providing competitive advantage to biomedical device companies, including technology for enabling biomedical devices to be safe and compatible with MRI diagnostics. Biophan spun out of Biomed Solutions in December 2000, through a merger with a public company, trading under the symbol BIPH. Biophan recently acquired a majority interest in TE-Bio, LLC, which is developing with NASA a patented biothermal battery for powering implantable devices based on thermal deltas in body heat, taking advantage of advances in nanomaterials.

Mike serves on the Boards of Biophan, Biomed Solutions, LLC, Technology Innovations, LLC, Speech Compression Technologies, LP, Nanoset, LLC, Myotech, LLC, TE-Bio, LLC, and OncoVista, Inc. These companies, all founded or cofounded by him, hold over 200 patents pending, issued, allowed, and/or licensed in (Biophan alone currently has over 150).

He has been a member of the Licensing Executives Society (LES) since 1984, and is a member of IEEE, AAAS, AFIO, and the NY Inventor's Club. He believes that society can benefit by improving the methods by which innovation moves from idea to application and commercialization.

Mike wrote the KurzweilAI.net article Simulating Reality. Read his interview in View From The Top. Listen to Mike's interview at the Milken Institute Global Conference. Listen to him talk about developments at Biophan. Read his interview with IEEE Spectrum. Print bio!