Our Team: Commercialization Council

Geoffrey Vince, Ph.D.
Chair, Biomedical Engineering
Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic

Geoffrey Vince, PhD, holds The Virginia Lois Kennedy Chair in Biomedical Engineering and Applied Therapeutics in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio.

Educated in his native England, Dr. Vince obtained his PhD in biomedical engineering from the University of Liverpool in 1989. He came to Cleveland Clinic's Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in 1992, rising to Associate Staff by 2003. While in BME, Dr. Vince and colleagues invented a new methodology for imaging the interior of coronary arteries using intravascular ultrasound. This methodology, "Virtual Histology™," was patented and later licensed to Volcano Therapeutics (now Volcano Corp.). To further develop his technology through to a product, Dr. Vince left Cleveland Clinic to join Volcano's Cleveland office in 2005 as Director of Research. In 2006, he became Vice-President of Clinical and Advanced R&D, moving to Volcano's headquarters in San Diego, California; much of his experience there involved international travel and a grasp of issues of technology transfer and intellectual property as viewed in several countries; his own invention has now become a product of some 5000 units worldwide.

In 2011, Dr. Vince was recruited back to Cleveland Clinic, this time as Chair of his former department. The reason? "Biomedical engineering is a perfect mixture of basic science, translational research, and clinical research."

Throughout his career, Dr. Vince's research has been awarded funding from the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, and many corporate sources. He is an inventor on more than 60 patents or patent applications in the U.S. and worldwide. He has served as an expert reviewer on NIH study sections and for several scientific publications. He has reported his own group's findings in dozens of highly rated scientific, clinical, and engineering oriented journals. Most recently, in March 2012, the American College of Cardiology issued a Supplement in its journal JACC-Cardiovascular Imaging consisting of articles based on the use of his Virtual Histology technique. Earlier while in Cleveland, he was a mentor to numerous students and postdoctoral fellows.