AWAK - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Finance
• HR Director
• Director, Finance and HR

Carol is the Finance and HR Director at AWAK Technologies Pte Ltd. She has previously worked at Ernst and Young for 4 years and has prior experience in auditing companies that are also in the Medical Technology industry. Carol is a Chartered Accountant and a member of Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants. She also holds a degree in Accountancy from Nanyang Technological University.

Job Titles:

• Associate Professor at Western University
• Associate Professor, Western University, Ontario, Canada
• Member of the Board for the Kidney Foundation of Canada

Dr. Jain is an Associate Professor at Western University. He completed his medical degree from the University of Toronto in 2002. And undertook an internal medicine residency and fellowship in nephrology at the University of Western Ontario, which was completed in 2007. He then completed a 3-year clinical/research Fellowship through the clinical investigator program at Western University. He was awarded a prestigious Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) health professionals research fellowship for this training. In 2010, Dr. Jain completed a Master of Science in clinical epidemiology under the supervision of Dr. Amit Garg. He has been on staff in the Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine at Western University since July 2010. Dr. Jain's focus of research has been in a few main areas: Clinical Peritoneal Dialysis (PD), Epidemiologic PD, and Health Services Research. Dr. Jain has completed numerous studies assessing clinic structure, laboratory reports and values, medications, and other health services research in the setting of chronic kidney disease. Dr. Jain has partnered with numerous groups all over the world including North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia/New Zealand. As Principal Investigator, Dr. Jain has received over $3M in peer-reviewed funding. He has published over 100 peer reviewed papers in various journals, including JAMA, BMJ, and CMAJ. Dr. Jain has achieved an h-index of 35 and has presented at numerous universities and conferences with 100+ presentations completed. Currently, Dr. Jain is completing a randomized controlled trial (RCT) comparing a novel remote monitoring system to standard of care for patients on Peritoneal Dialysis. This project will involve multiple sites from across Canada, in which he aims to randomize 400-500 patients, making this one of the largest randomized trials completed in PD. He is the Canadian Co-Lead for the Peritoneal Dialysis Outcomes and Practice Patterns Study (PDOPPS). This large multi-national undertaking is designed to advance the understanding of optimal practices for PD patients worldwide. Dr. Jain is an active member of the Board for the Kidney Foundation of Canada. The Kidney Foundation is the largest and most well-known patient advocacy group for people with kidney disease in Canada. He has personally raised well over $500K for this worthy charitable organization. In 2013, Dr. Jain founded the Peritoneal Dialysis University for Interventional Nephrology for nephrologists and radiologists (PDU:IN/IR), which takes place at least once a year in Tampa Bay, Florida. This course has attracted numerous physicians from around the world. Recently, Dr. Jain was elected as a Board member to the Canadian Society of Nephrology. He is a member of the North American Chapter of the International Society for Peritoneal Dialysis. As well, Dr. Jain serves as a faculty member for the American Society of Nephrology pre-course on Maintenance Dialysis.

Job Titles:

• Medical Consultant of EFAI

Dr. Chin-Chi Kuo of CMUH, Medical Consultant of EFAI, said: "AI is revolutionizing healthcare with machine learning based data intelligence, providing unparalleled insights. The innovative AI models developed using the CMUH iHi (ignite Hyper-intelligence) platform exemplify this transformation. These models offer clinicians advanced tools for CKD management, enabling effective risk stratification and optimal resource allocation. This innovation heralds a new era of proactive, intelligent kidney care, showcasing a significant leap in healthcare technology and digital patient management strategies."

Job Titles:

• Deputy Director, PD Program, Singapore General Hospital
• Senior Consultant at Department of Renal Medicine

Dr Htay Htay is a senior consultant at Department of Renal Medicine and also a Deputy Director of Peritoneal Dialysis Program, Singapore General Hospital. She graduated from University of Medicine Yangon, Myanmar and received Master of Medicine from the National University of Singapore. She completed advanced specialist training in Nephrology at Singapore General Hospital. She received Health Manpower Development Programme (HMDP) Award and underwent one-year fellowship training at Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane, Australia. She is a fellow of Royal College of Physician and also a member of International Society for Peritoneal Dialysis, and Singapore Society of Nephrology. She was awarded as ISN-GKHA (Global Kidney Health Atlas) fellow (2016 -2020) by International Society of Nephrology. She has been appointed as clinical assistant Professor in Duke-NUS Medical School. She is also a clinical lecturer at National University of Singapore, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine. She is also a visiting lecturer for Advanced Diploma in Nursing in Nanyang Polytechnic. In addition, she is interested in clinical research and has published original papers and review articles in international peer review journals.

Job Titles:

• Director of Singapore General Hospital Peritoneal Dialysis Program
• Director, PD Program, Singapore General Hospital

Dr. Marjorie Foo is the Director of Singapore General Hospital Peritoneal Dialysis Program and heads the Renal Medicine unit. She is also the Clinical Senior Lecturer at National University of Singapore and associate professor at Duke-NUS Medical School. Dr. Foo actively engages across several committees working to strengthen kidney care and dialysis efforts globally. She is the Chair of Clinical Privileging and Competency committee and Chair of Renal Medicine Senior Residency Examination Committee. She's involved in the Part time physician scheme (PTPS) Ministry of Health , Singapore and co-chairs the Clinical Integration Committee at SGH. She graduated from Queen's University Belfast in 1989, MB ChB. BAO ( Belf), and attained MRCP (UK) 1992, FAMS 2003 and FRCP (Glasgow) 2004. In the UK, Dr. Foo was trained in University College Hospital, The Middlesex Hospital and Hammersmith Hospital London. Her training in Nephrology was completed in 2001. Dr. Foo is fully trained in all aspects of Nephrology; i.e. transplantation, general nephrology, haemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis. Her main subspecialty interest is in peritoneal dialysis and the use of telemedicine in monitoring of chronic disease and treatment.

Job Titles:

• R & D Manager
• Lead System Architect

Jason is the R&D Manager for AWAK and has more than a decade's worth of experience in medical device design & development. Prior to joining AWAK, he spent 8 years working as a Design Engineer and was involved in the development of more than a dozen various medical devices. Jason has been with AWAK since 2013 and is currently overseeing product design development as well as pre-clinical & clinical testing. He holds a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Nottingham.

Job Titles:

• Director, Systems Engineering & QA / RA
• System Engineering Expert

Jiang Cong joined AWAK Technologies in January 2019 as the Director of System Engineering and QA&RA. In this role, he is leading the Quality, Regulatory, and System Engineering teams to ensure that AWAK products are designed and built with quality and fulfill the expectations of both customers and regulatory bodies. Prior to AWAK, Jiang Cong had over 12 years of experience in the areas of system and quality engineering. In his previous roles in Hill-Rom and Life Technologies (now part of Thermo Fisher Scientific), he provided technical leadership to several successful projects of various scales which enhanced the competitive edge of the companies. He has championed the creation and maintenance of these products' DHF per FDA 21 CFR PART 820, EU MDD/MDR, and ISO13485 guidelines. He was also experienced in ensuring the quality is built into the design of the products and led the team in navigating through several major audits including FDA audit, notified body audit, etc. He also has in-depth knowledge of FDA premarket notification/approval submissions and CE clearance processes. Jiang Cong is a system engineering expert with extensive knowledge in system definition, system development, and system integration of medical products. He is also experienced in acting as the technological leader in the product commercialization processes following design for six sigma (DFSS) and customer-oriented product design approaches. He has broad exposure over quality management of medical devices. Jiang Cong holds a M.Eng. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Nanyang Technological University (NTU). He received his B.Eng. (first-class honor) from the same school.

Job Titles:

• Senior Director, Engineering and R & D
• Senior R & D Director

Joel is the Senior R&D Director at AWAK. In his role, he will be leading all the activities related to Systems Engineering, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Connectivity. He also has additional responsibility of managing QMS and Regulatory functions. Joel joined AWAK from Hill-Rom where he was managing multiple teams towards commercialization for the Respiratory Care business unit. He has experience of over 10 years in R&D, majority of which is in Medical Devices industry. Prior to Hill-Rom, Joel has worked in multitude of industries such as Aerospace, Automotive and Semiconductors. During his career, he has worked on some of the world's well-known programs such as Boeing 787, Volvo Trucks, AMD APUs to name a few. Joel has experience in executing New Product Development projects, Early Innovation programs and has been actively involved in new innovation. He is also an avid inventor with multiple patents pending. During his tenure in the New Product Development, he was actively involved in strategizing the device connectivity platform, conceptualised and launched Hill-Rom's first healthcare analytics platform which is being used actively by thousands of patients in the US. Additionally he spearheaded various efforts in different areas like V&V, System Software, Manufacturing, Mobile App development to name a few. Joel holds an Engineering degree in Electronics and Communications from the Visvesvaraya Technological University, India.

Job Titles:

• Director, R & D

Yau Luong joined AWAK Technologies in July 2021 as the Director of Research & Development to lead technology development and engineering activities. Yau Luong has 10 years of experience in product development, operations, supply chain and business development roles for life sciences, consulting and investment companies. Before AWAK, he was Head of Business Development at Trendlines Labs Singapore, the innovation unit for Trendlines Medical, an Israel-based technology incubator, tasked to set up and advance the presence in the Asian region. In this role, he worked with government agencies, healthcare institutions, MNCs and Startups to kickstart commercialization of seed technologies for medical applications. Till 2020, he served as Associate Director for Product Development for Biolidics Ltd(SGX: 8YY), a Singapore med-tech company providing oncology and acute disease diagnostic solutions. He led the product development team that launched the world's first label free CTC(Circulating Tumor Cell) isolation system and COVID-19 Antibody detection kits. From 2014 - 2020, he was founder of a product development agency, Buildlabs Pte Ltd, that consulted for companies in the medical and consumer electronics space, serving to provide development strategies and technical solutions to help them get to market. Yau Luong has an Exec MBA from Quantic School of Business and Technology(Washington DC), BE in Bioengineering from National University of Singapore(NUS) and Minor in Technopreneurship from NUS Overseas Colleges.

Job Titles:

• Chief Business Officer
• Chief Marketing Officer

As the Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Business Officer at AWAK Technologies Pte Ltd, Mandar Gori leads Marketing, Clinical and Business Development departments. He was instrumental in successfully closing the largest MedTech Series A funding round in Singapore of US$ 40 million. Under his leadership, US FDA granted Breakthrough Device Designation to AWAK's wearable dialysis product in 2019, a major milestone for AWAK as it became first in the region to achieve this designation and the first globally in the kidney care industry. In 2018 AWAK completed its First-In-Human clinical trial in Singapore General Hospital proving for the first time safety of a wearable artificial kidney. Prior to AWAK, Mandar was Deputy Director at Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore's premier R&D and commercialisation agency, where he successfully established programs to train and develop local MedTech talent and give them an in-depth understanding of other regional healthcare markets. As a Commercial Manager at Hill-Rom (acquired by Baxter in 2021), a global $12 Billion medical device manufacturer, Mandar successfully launched several products in the Asian markets. In his role at Hill-Rom he managed sales channels across ASEAN, S.Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indian sub-continent for the entire product portfolio of the company. In his early career, Mandar was a Project Manager for a US-based digital health start-up MedMined Inc where he launched several one-of-a-kind products which gave unmatched clinical intelligence at point-of-care. These solutions based on datamining and artificial intelligence were first in their categories to show better clinical outcomes and cost savings in the areas of hospital-acquired infections and medication errors. MedMined was later acquired by Cardinal Health, spun-off into CareFusion and then acquired by Becton Dickinson (BD). Mandar has a keen interest in talent development. He was a mentor at Junior Achievement in Singapore, one of the world's largest non-profit organization dedicated to inspire and prepare younger generation to succeed in a global economy. As a teaching volunteer at Akanksha Foundation he mentored underprivileged kids from urban areas in India. Mandar has a MBA from Nanyang Business School (Singapore), MS in Healthcare Informatics from University of Alabama at Birmingham (USA) and BE in Information Technology from Mumbai University (India). He also has several patents related to technologies in kidney care under his name.

Job Titles:

• Chairman
• Chairman of AWAK Technologies, Sai
• Founding Group Chief Executive Officer of Advanced MedTech Holdings

Abel Ang, Chairman of AWAK Technologies, said: "We are thrilled to have received a second Breakthrough Device Designation from the US FDA, making us one of the few Asia-based MedTech companies with multiple FDA breakthrough device designations. With our recent US$20+M series B fundraise, we are excited about expanding our activities into the United States, the largest dialysis market in the world." Mr Abel Ang is the founding Group Chief Executive Officer of Advanced MedTech Holdings, a US$300M global player in urology devices and services. The group has quadrupled its revenue since its founding. Mr. Ang has a proven track record in the medical device sector. He has served as the Senior Advisor to the CEO of Greatbatch Inc (NYSE: ITGR), providing guidance relative to the commercialization of medical device technologies in the cardiac, neurology, vascular and orthopedic markets. Prior to Greatbatch, Mr. Ang was President, Asia/Pacific for Hill-Rom Inc. a US$3B revenue medical devices company (acquired by NYSE: BAX) where he was responsible for leading, developing and implementing the strategy to expand Hill-Rom's presence in the Asia/Pacific markets. He formerly served as the Chief Technology Officer for Hill-Rom for 3 years. In that role he had overall responsibility for Hill-Rom's global R&D operations which are distributed across sites in the U.S., Mexico, France, and Singapore. At Hill-Rom, he also held the positions of Vice-President and General Manager of Hill-Rom's US$420M Global Therapy Business unit, and Vice-President for International Business Development. He formerly headed the global Medical Technology and Biotechnology industry groups in the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB). Mr. Ang sits on the Board of Economic Development Innovations Singapore, a privately-held investment holding company headquartered in Singapore with direct investments in deeptech, education and listed assets. He sits on the Boards of various Advanced MedTech group companies: Dornier MedTech GmbH, AMT Pte Ltd, SonoMotion Inc,. and AWAK Technologies, where he chairs the Board. He was formerly on the Board and Nominating Committee of Aslan Pharmaceuticals (NYSE: ASLN). Mr. Ang is an Adjunct full Professor at the Nanyang Business School in Singapore and Waseda University in Japan, where he teaches in their respective MBA programs. On the education front, he also sits on the Board of Singapore Institute of Management, a profitable private education platform, which has 16,000 students in Asia and 180,000 alumni. Mr. Ang has a Master of Science in Computational Biology from Rutgers University in New Jersey, which he pursued while on an EDB scholarship. He attended Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program in 2012. He was awarded the Public Service Medal (PBM) in 2021 for his contributions to the medical device industry in Singapore.

Job Titles:

• Vice President - Investments, Vickers Venture Partners
• Vice President at Vickers Venture Partners

Mhamed is a Vice President at Vickers Venture Partners, a global deep tech venture capital firm with $650M assets under management, and is based in New York City, USA. He is part of the fund investment team and is involved in the full investment cycle, having contributed to transactions in the US, Europe and Asia mostly in the Healthcare and Fintech sectors.

Job Titles:

• Managing Director of Pristine Capital Pte
• Managing Director, Pristine Capital Pte Ltd

Mr. Soo is the Managing Director of Pristine Capital Pte Ltd, an asset management company from 2013 till to date. Prior to that, he was an Executive Director with UBS AG, Singapore branch, managing the Ultra High Net Worth clients within the UBS Wealth Management business. Mr. Soo has been active investing into the start ups, and other private companies, involving quite substantially with the investee companies with aim to bring them to public listing. Mr. Soo graduated from Materials Engineering from Nanyang Technological University of Singapore in 1995. He started out as an engineer for 3 years at semiconductor manufacturing company before joining Citibank, NA to be banker till late 2012.

Job Titles:

• Chief Executive Officer

Suresha Venkataraya, Chief Executive Officer of AWAK Technologies, said: "This designation is a key milestone which will enable us to accelerate product validation and we look forward to working with the agency to help bring this predictive AI model into clinical practice. We are delighted to work with our partners in this journey, who share our passion for bringing transformative solutions for timely detection and treatment of kidney disease to reduce the physical, mental and financial burden on the patients and the healthcare system." Suresha is the Chief Executive Officer of AWAK Technologies. He has spent over a decade in the medical technology space, enabling company growth, increasing revenues, and developing various innovative medical devices.

Job Titles:

• Principal Consultant of Her Own Company, Lucent Clinical Consulting
• Principal Consultant, Lucent Clinical Consulting

Ms. Kimberly Wong Oleson has over 30 years of proven clinical research experience in helping companies realize the commercialization of new medical technologies, including Class III devices. Ms. Oleson's career includes industry roles that cover all stages of a medical device's product lifecycle: product development, preclinical testing, first-in-human trials, pivotal clinical trials, regulatory registration, market launch and clinician adoption. Currently, Ms. Oleson is the Principal Consultant of her own company, Lucent Clinical Consulting, founded in 2020, focused on serving the healthcare industry in accelerating the global commercial launch of products that improve public health. Prior to founding Lucent Clinical Consulting, Ms. Oleson was at Danaher Corporation as the Vice President of Global Clinical Affairs, Danaher Life Sciences & Diagnostics Platforms, where she oversaw the group's large clinical trial portfolio and established best-practice standards that improved on-time trial completion from 25% to 92%. Prior to her expanded role at Danaher, Ms. Oleson was the Senior Vice President of Clinical Affairs at Sunshine Heart, Inc, a start-up medical device company focused on commercializing an implantable Class III PMA medical device for end-stage heart failure patients. Before Sunshine Heart, Ms. Oleson worked at Medtronic Inc for nearly 28 years, holding positions of increasing responsibility. In her last position with Medtronic as the Vice President of Global Clinical Operations, she established the company's centralized global clinical operations group that supported a portfolio of >350 trials for the Medtronic Clinical Research Institute (MCRI). In prior roles at Medtronic, she was instrumental in directing global clinical and regulatory teams that completed pivotal trials for Class III devices for cardiac electrical mapping and ablation of heart rhythm disorders, oversaw clinical programs for a new steerable cardiac pacing lead design that opened new markets in cardiac HIS bundle pacing, created new preclinical research capabilities that accelerated the development of the world's first MRI-compatible implantable stimulation devices and filed provisional patents on risk-based trial conduct. An early highlight in Ms. Oleson's lengthy clinical research career at Medtronic was successfully leading the InterStim™ multicenter pivotal trial with an adaptive trial design that earned the company a Class III original PMA, two PMA supplements and U.S. Medicare reimbursement coverage for a novel implantable neurostimulator device. For the International Standards Organization (ISO), Ms. Oleson is currently appointed by the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) as a Clinical Expert for Technical Committee TC210/WG4 that authored the ISO 20916:2019 (Good Study Practices for In-vitro Diagnostic Products) and as a Liaison Clinical Expert for Technical Committee TC 194/WG3 ISO 14155:2020 (Good Clinical Practices for Medical Devices). Ms. Oleson graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Biometry/Biostatistics from the University of Minnesota, USA.

Job Titles:

• Scientist
• Senior Principal

Peter has a rich hands-on experience of 12+ years working in both Singapore and Australia. He has broad research experience working in academia and industry in a wide range of industries including medical devices, food & water testing, semiconductors and natural products. In the medical field, Peter has formulated of anti-microbial coatings for hospital surfaces as well as enzymatic detergents for cleaning surgical instruments. Additionally, he has worked in analysis for nutritional panels and in manufacture of semiconducting thin films by chemical vapour deposition. Peter completed his BSc(Hons) in Chemistry from UNSW, Sydney, Australia. He has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals on natural products and inorganic synthetic chemistry. He is currently completing a Grad Cert in Intellectual Property Law and is part of the team overseeing the AWAK patent portfolio.

Job Titles:

• Media Contacts

Job Titles:

• Professor of Renal Medicine, Imperial College London

Professor Edwina Brown's main research interests are peritoneal dialysis, dialysis outcomes in older people and renal palliative care. She is currently the principal investigator for the study Kidney Transplantation in Older People (KTOP). She organises an annual meeting on Renal Supportive Care and co-organises the UK PD Academy. She co-chaired the ISPD guideline committee (2014-2020) and has overseen the development of the 2020 guideline on ‘Prescribing high quality, goal-directed peritoneal dialysis'. She is the co-chair for the KDIGO controversies conference on symptom-based complications in dialysis (May 2022) and is the president-elect for the ISPD (2020-2022); she will become the president in August 2022

Job Titles:

• Senior Director, Chemistry

Sanjay Singh, Ph.D. joined AWAK in 2018 and since then he is responsible for the development of the sorbent, with a multi-disciplinary team, for application in wearable dialysis device and other related chemistry. He has also taken a role in overseeing pre-clinical research activities including validation of sorbent in animals and other in-house projects. In his present role, he also supports the innovation team in scouting new emerging technologies based on the strategic direction of the company. Prior to joining AWAK, Sanjay was Section head, Medicinal Chemistry at Curia Inc (formerly Albany Molecular Research Inc), where he was responsible for driving multiple pre-clinical drug discovery research projects and providing analytical support for drug discovery programmes with a team of experienced medicinal and analytical chemist respectively. The key therapeutic area of research included Thrombosis, Oncology and Autoimmune disorder. Sanjay earned his Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from Central Drug Research Institute, CSIR, India, where he worked on the isolation and screening of natural products of medicinal values and high-throughput solid-phase synthesis of organic molecule library and peptide library of biological interest.

Job Titles:

• Country Head, AWAK India