Executive Team
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 Business and Financial Officer, Senior Vice President of VirtualScopics since May 2008 and Chief Financial Officer since May 2003. Ms. Henderson's primary functions at VirtualScopics include providing strategic direction and overseeing all legal, intellectual property, business and financial related matters, as well as ensuring compliance with financial and SEC reporting requirements. Additionally, Ms. Henderson is responsible for the Company's investor relations and prepares and coordinates all of VirtualScopics external communications, including press announcements. Ms. Henderson routinely visits New York City and other key cities throughout the US conducting road shows as well as frequent presentations of the Company and its technology at key life science investor conferences.
Ms. Henderson has been a guest lecturer at The Simon School (University of Rochester Masters in Business Administration program) and was a finalist for 2009 CFO of the Year in the public company category. Ms. Henderson was also a recipient of the 40 Under 40 award hosted by the Rochester Business Journal.
Earlier in her career, Ms. Henderson served as the Corporate Controller of Ultralife, Inc., (NasdaqNM: ULBI) a publicly-held provider of high performance lithium battery solutions. Prior to Ultralife, Ms. Henderson was a Manager in the audit division of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. 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.
Jonathan Riek, Ph.D.
Chief Technical Officer
Jonathan Riek specializes in algorithm and software development for musculoskeletal applications for VirtualScopics. He has extensive custom software development experience in both biomedical imaging and consumer imaging. Jonathan began his career at VirtualScopics leading the development of the initial version of the software system that is in use at VirtualScopics today. Prior to VirtualScopics, he was a senior imaging scientist in the research laboratories at Eastman Kodak for seven years. His work there included motion estimation, temporal interpolation, frame-rate conversion and video compression. Before Kodak, Jonathan worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Strong Memorial Hospital developing software and calibration algorithms for a three-dimensional CT scanner. He holds four patents and has produced several articles on the reduction of motion artifacts in MRI. He received his Ph.D., M.S. and B.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Rochester.
Colin Rhodes
Vice President of Software Development
Colin Rhodes joined VirtualScopics in July
2006 as Director of Software Development and was promoted to Vice
President in 2012. 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
Vice President of Clinical Affairs
Link to CV
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.
Erik L. Jensen
Vice President, Global Business Development and Marketing
Erik Jensen joined VirtualScopics in October 2006 as Business Development Manager and was promoted to Vice President, Global Business Development and Marketing in March 2012. Mr. Jensen is a global sales professional with over 25 years of Global Sales, Marketing and Executive Management experience providing Medical Imaging Services into the Pharmaceutical, Biotechnology, and Medical Device industries; Capital Equipment into the Semiconductor and Precision Machining industries; Perishable Tooling into the Machine Tool industry; Industrial Automation Products, Integrated Systems, and Engineering Services into the Discreet and Process Manufacturing industries. Prior to joining VirtualScopics, Mr. Jensen was the Global Sales and Marketing Manager for a Division of Corning, Inc. that designed and manufactured optical inspection systems based on grazing incident interferometry. Mr. Jensen received his Bachelor of Technology degree in Mechanical Engineering and his M.B.A. from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Ronald Way
Director, Operations
Ron Way joined VirtualScopics as Director
of Operations in January 2011 and leads all functions of VirtualScopics
responsible for the delivery of imaging solutions to our customers.
Ron's areas of responsibility include project management, technical
services, image processing and analysis, site management, and incoming
image processing. Prior to VirtualScopics, Ron spent 16 years in various
capacities of manufacturing operations with Ultralife, Inc.
Nancy Volkmuth
Director, Human Resources
Nancy Volkmuth has served as
VirtualScopics' Director of Human Resources since September 2007. Ms.
Volkmuth has over 20 years experience in Human Resources management and
has held senior level human resources management positions in medical
imaging, manufacturing, and consultancy companies. Ms. Volkmuth is
responsible for all aspects of human resource management, including
staffing, communications, training and development, employee relations,
payroll/compensation administration, and benefits management. Ms.
Volkmuth received her B.S. from the State University of New York at
Geneseo and her M.B.A. from the Saunders School of Business, Rochester
Institute of Technology. She is a member of the Society of Human
Resource Management and is active in community service initiatives.
Nicole A. Barrett-Vespone , B. S., M. S.
Director of Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs
Nicole A. Barrett-Vespone has been Director of Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs since December 2011 and is responsible for all corporate wide quality assurance programs and management. Ms. Vespone's career encompasses both engineering and quality management, and has focused on medical device development for over 20 years. Prior to joining VirtualScopics, Ms. Vespone held senior level quality management positions at Johnson and Johnson, Bausch and Lomb and SIGMA International, where she oversaw process control/CAPA initiatives as well as ensuring regulatory compliance, medical device reporting and change management. Ms. Vespone received her BS in Biology from St. John Fisher College and her MS in Biochemistry from the University of Rochester.