executive management
Jeff Markin - President & Chief Executive Officer
Jeff Markin was appointed as Chief Executive Officer and President of VirtualScopics, Inc., in August 2006. He joined VirtualScopics as Chief Operating Officer in May 2006, after 26 years at Eastman Kodak Company. Most recently, Jeff was General Manager, Output Systems and Mammography Solutions for Kodak's Health Group and a corporate officer of the company. Jeff managed major Health Group operations including leadership of the conventional x-ray business, Mammography Solutions, HealthCare IT Software and Solutions business, and Global Radiology Sales and Service organization. He was awarded the Eastman Kodak Chairman's leadership award in December 2004 for inspired leadership of company and health group objectives. Previously, he held leadership positions in the Document Imaging business, including Vice President of Marketing U.S. and Canada, Global General Manager of the output business, and General Manager of the Asia based services business with operations in China, Hong Kong, Philippines, Malaysia, and Australia. He also served on the board of directors for Hermes Precisa Australia the leading document services company in Australia. He joined Kodak in the company's Rochester, N.Y. film operations division and held successive management positions in Manufacturing, Research and Development, and Quality. In 1997, Jeff was selected to attend the Executive MBA program of the Simon School of Business, University of Rochester, where he graduated with honors. He holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering, with honors, from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Molly Henderson - Chief Business and Financial Officer and Sr. Vice President
Molly Henderson has served as Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Finance of the Company since May 2003 and the Chief Business and Financial Officer since May 2008. She served as VirtualScopics, LLC's Controller from October 2002 to May 2003. Ms. Henderson previously served as the Corporate Controller of Ultralife Batteries, Inc., (NasdaqNM: ULBI) a publicly-traded provider of high performance lithium battery solutions. Ms. Henderson's primary functions at the company include providing strategic direction and overseeing all legal and financial related matters, as well as overseeing and ensuring proper accounting standards of the company. Earlier in her career, she was a Manager in the audit division of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, and her clients included Bausch & Lomb, Inc., Frontier Communications, Tropicana and FF Thompson Health System. Ms. Henderson received her M.B.A. and B.S. degrees from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Edward Ashton, Ph.D. - Chief Scientific Officer
Edward Ashton is responsible for the scientific and algorithm development for the applications for VirtualScopics. He has extensive custom software development experience in both biomedical imaging and military surveillance and reconnaissance. Dr. Ashton is a frequent speaker at international imaging conferences and has authored many peer-reviewed publications of his research at VirtualScopics. Prior to VirtualScopics, he was a lead signal processing engineer at The MITRE Corporation in McLean, VA. Earlier in his career, Dr. Ashton spent three years as a research engineer with the Naval Research Laboratory, where he received the Alan Berman Research Publication Award and was nominated for the Edison Award for Applied Science. Dr. Ashton has produced numerous articles on target detection and image analysis with military applications, including a chapter on hyperspectral target identification in the recently published textbook Information Processing for Remote Sensing. He received both his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Rochester, and his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Loyola College. Additionally, he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow as well as a Sproul Fellow at the University of Rochester.
Rosemary J. Shull - Vice President of Business Development
Rosemary Shull’s responsibilities include oversight and creation of the company’s sales initiatives, managing the sales team, and coordinating the company’s marketing programs. She joined the company in 2002 as a Project Manager and then transitioned into Business Development/Sales and Marketing and was promoted to Vice President of Business Development, in December 2007. Ms. Shull serves as a primary liaison with key scientific, academic, biopharmaceutical researchers and industry strategic alliances in therapeutic areas including oncology, neurology and musculoskeletal diseases. Prior to joining VirtualScopics, Ms. Shull spent 15 years in academia. She has a Bachelor of Arts in History from SUNY Geneseo and a Master of Arts in History with honors from SUNY Brockport.
Jonathan Riek, Ph.D. - Vice President of Technology and Product Development
Jonathan Riek is responsible for the conversion of core image processing algorithms into optimized commercial grade software applications. Dr. Riek leads the software engineering organization and successfully implemented a regulatory-compliant software development process per FDA guidelines. Prior to VirtualScopics, Dr. Riek spent seven years at Eastman Kodak's research labs working in the areas of motion estimation, frame rate conversion, temporal interpolation, and video compression. In addition, he drove the commercialization of algorithms from research into the corporate-wide image processing software library. Prior to Kodak, Dr. Riek worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Strong Memorial Hospital developing software for a three-dimensional CT scanner. He holds three patents and has produced numerous articles on artifact reduction in MRI. Dr. Riek received Ph.D., M.S., and B.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Rochester.
Toni Handzel - Director of Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs
Toni Tomaselli Handzel has been Director of Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs since November 2004 and is responsible for corporate wide quality assurance. She has extensive experience in developing and managing quality systems for the pharmaceutical, CRO, and medical device industries. Prior to joining the company, she was a Senior Consultant with Excel Partnership, Inc. where she provided quality system consulting and training support in both regulated and non-regulated industries including the pharmaceutical and CRO sectors. She has extensive experience in quality systems development and improvement focused on ensuring that both national and international regulatory requirements are met. Earlier in her career she served as Quality and Engineering Manager with Bausch and Lomb, Inc. Ms. Handzel received her BA in Mathematics from Syracuse University, her M.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Arizona, and her MBA from Rensselear Polytechnical Institute.
Colin Rhodes - Director of Software Development
Colin Rhodes joined VirtualScopics in July 2006 as Director of Software Development. Prior to joining the company, Colin spent nine years at Eastman Kodak's Health Group where he managed development activities in the medical device arena. Colin has been responsible for both development and customer-facing implementation projects in Australia, Silicon Valley, Singapore, and, most recently, Rochester where he was the Rapid Development Manager in Kodak's Health Care Information Systems Division. He has a proven background of developing industry-leading medical devices in the Picture Archiving, and Communication Systems space. Mr Rhodes received his Research Masters degree in Computer Science from the University of Queensland, Australia, and his undergraduate degree with honors in Pure Mathematics from the University of Adelaide.
Mark W. Tengowski, DVM, MS, PhD - Director of Clinical Affairs
Mark Tengowski was appointed Director of Clinical Affairs in October 2007 following a successful eight year experience with Pfizer Global Research and Development in Groton, CT, and Ann Arbor, MI. As an alumnus of the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Tengowski brings his drug safety and development experiences to our group of radiologists and imaging scientists to support sponsor studies intended for internal development decisions as well as submission to regulatory agencies. He has an interest in inflammation disease targets, such as rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis, as well as shared pharmacology for use as oncology drug targets, with whole-body and extremity MRI, CT, and PET modality experiences. In addition to the application of imaging biomarkers as decision-making end points in clinical trials, Dr. Tengowski has a continued interest in the application of microdosing strategies for compounds and novel PET tracers, serving as an invited speaker and workshop participant in various public-private meetings. Dr. Tengowski is also licensed to practice Veterinary Medicine and is accredited by the USDA.
