BMES Announces Newly-Elected Board of Directors

President-Elect
Shelly Sakiyama-Elbert

Shelly Sakiyama-Elbert is the Vice Dean for Research and Graduate Education at the University of Washington School of Medicine and Professor of Bioengineering. She earned a S.B. in chemical engineering and biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a M.S. and Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology. She joined the faculty at Washington University in Biomedical Engineering in 2000 as an Assistant Professor, where she advanced to the position of the Joseph and Florence Farrow Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Vice Dean for Research in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. She served as Department Chair and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin from August 2016 - June 2022.

Treasurer
Kent Leach

Kent Leach is the Ellison Professor of Musculoskeletal Research and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at UC Davis. He is a Fellow of American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). He has been a member of the BMES Board of Directors and America’s Council of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society. He is the Program Director of one of eight NIH-funded predoctoral training grants focused on musculoskeletal health nationally.

Director
Aaron Kyle

Aaron Kyle is Professor of the Practice in Biomedical Engineering at Duke University. He teaches first-year design, medical instrumentation, and capstone design courses. He is also Director of the Outreach Design Education (ODE) Program, which focuses on enhancing STEM identity in younger students through engineering design education. More than 1,000 students in New York City and North Carolina have been introduced to engineering design through ODE pre-college programs and courses.

Director
John Fisher

John P. Fisher is Fischell Family Distinguished Professor and Department Chair in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering at the University of Maryland. Fisher has been involved with BMES for more than 20 years as a member, presenter, reviewer, session chair, track chair, committee member and chair, Fellow, and co-chair of the 2018 Annual Meeting. Fisher has served in numerous positions within partner societies, including ISBF, SFB, and TERMIS.  In many of these positions, Fisher has worked closely with underserved students, encouraging their participation in STEM careers.

A.J. Mellott is the CEO and Co-Founder of Ronawk, Inc., a biotechnology company with the mission of accelerating next-generation therapies by deploying tissue engineering strategies. In four years, Ronawk has grown from two employees to 15, while raising $8 million in equity funding. Ronawk has received $2.1 million in grant funding and has generated $1.3 million revenue to-date. Ronawk is currently supporting 15 major biomedical pilot projects and has engaged with nearly 170 companies and universities worldwide.

For the past seven of his 20-year career, Zachary Dooley led the Mechanical Test Lab for SeaSpine/OrthoFix. During which he supervised numerous biomedical engineers and contributed to more than 110 regulatory submissions to bring spinal devices to market. As co-chair of ASTM F04.25 and a US delegate to ISO TC 150, Dooley is heavily involved in the creation and maintenance of international standards for medical devices. Moreover, Dooley maintains involvement in BMES,  serving as a current ABET program evaluator, an abstract reviewer, platform session chair, and guest panelist at many annual meetings.