Medical XR Advisory Council

Well known as the “Cyber Guardian”, founder of the XR Safety Initiative (XRSI), Kavya Pearlman is an award-winning cybersecurity professional with a deep interest in immersive and emerging technologies. Kavya is constantly exploring new technologies to solve current cybersecurity challenges. She is one of the Top 50 speakers in the cybersecurity industry and named Top 20 Cybersecurity influencers for three consecutive years 2018-2019-2020 by IFSEC Global. Kavya has won many awards for her work and contribution to the security community including:

• Cybersecurity Woman of the Year 2020 by Cybersecurity Excellence Award Series
• Cybersecurity Professional of the Year 2020 by Cybersecurity Excellence Award Series
• Most Influential Cyber Security Leader 2020 by Acquisition International
• 40 under 40 Top Business Executives 2019 by San Francisco Business Times
• Rising Star of the year 2019 by Women in IT Award Series 
• CISO Women Security Leader award from Middle East CISO Council
• Minority CISO of the Year 2018 by International Consortium of Minorities Cybersecurity Professional (ICMCP)

Kavya has previously advised Facebook on third party security risks during the 2016 US presidential elections and worked as the head of security for the oldest existing virtual world “Second Life” by Linden Lab. Kavya constantly shares knowledge via webinars, conference talks and blog posts around Application Security, Cloud-native technologies, Machine Learning and immersive technologies such as XR. 

Kavya holds a master’s degree network security from DePaul University, Chicago and many prestigious Information Security certifications including CISM (Certified Information Security Manager) from ISACA, and PCIP for Payment Card Industry Security Standard Council.

Kavya is truly passionate about her work and inspires many around the world including women and underrepresented communities in security and emerging technologies. Kavya is a board of directors for EM360, non-profit “Minorities in Cybersecurity”, an advisory board member for "CISO Council North America", Spark Mindset LLC, and cybersecurity advisory board member for the University of New Haven.

Rachel Michelson is a Medical XR Advisor at XRSI, helping to remove obstacles in incorporating Extended Reality into regulated ecosystems like healthcare while keeping technology safe, secure, ethical, and inclusive. Rachel's specific focus is on cybersecurity.

Rachel's experience is a potent combination of software development for public safety, followed by cybersecurity evaluation of medical and other IoT devices. This allows her to see the trade-offs of a cybersecurity risk management from multiple angles. As an evaluator, Rachel strives for solutions that are fully compliant to the best industry standards. As a hands-on software developer, she is used to operating within practical constraints of legacy components, limited device resources, budget, and prioritization challenges facing a manufacturer and an integrator alike, Rachel spent 20 years at Motorola, mostly working on adding security (audio and data encryption and authentication) into multiple components of Motorola's two-way radio systems for public safety. She traversed the technical ladder from a software developer to a software architect. Rachel has led her products through FIPS 140-2 certification and other regulatory approvals. To build upon this experience, Rachel then joined UL to evaluate other manufacturers'  medical devices against appropriate standards, such as IEC 62304 and UL 2900. This includes device testing and documentation and corporate processes reviews alike. Rachel is fascinated by an opportunity to witness and perhaps influence multiple designs from both established and up-and-coming technology vendors.

Rachel holds a Bachelor's degree in computer engineering from MIT and a Master's degree in the same discipline from National Technological University (currently Walden University, one of the first online universities). Rachel volunteers with MIT's Educational Council.

Walter Greenleaf is a research scientist, trained in Neuro and Behavioral Science, and a medical product developer, with a specific focus on virtual reality and digital health technology. He's been active in developing Clinical Virtual Reality Systems for more than 30 years.

He recently served as the Director of the Mind Division, Stanford Center on Longevity, and he's currently a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s MediaX Program and a Visiting Scholar at Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab. In addition to his work at Stanford, he is SVP of Strategic & Corp. Affairs to MindMaze and Chief Science Advisor to Pear Therapeutics. He is a VR technology and neuroscience advisor to several early-stage medical product companies.

His doctoral research at Stanford in Neuro & Behavioral Science focused on the interaction between hormones and human behavior. While working on his dissertation, he founded the first of several successful medical product companies. He has since maintained this dual-role in academics and business – lecturing, conducting research and publishing, while concurrently developing and bringing medical products to market.

As a pioneer that has remained active in the development of medical applications of Virtual Reality Technology, he also frequently contributes to the field as a keynote speaker, as an editor for a leading journal, and as a conference organizer.

In behavioral medicine, he has developed and helped bring to market systems for the treatment of PTSD, anxiety disorders, autism spectrum disorders, and addictions. 

Donna Brady Raziano, MD, MBA, FACP, AGSF is the Chief Medical Officer of Mercy LIFE, Mercy Home Health and LIFE St. Mary. Dr. Raziano’s credentials include ABIM board certification in Geriatric Medicine and Hospice & Palliative Care as well as a MBA in Health Care Management from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Raziano has been passionate about serving older adults for her entire professional career. For the past 15 years she has been responsible for the delivery of care in multiple full risk PACE locations as well manage their Medicare Part D plans. Her leadership also includes oversight of professional primary care staff at six PACE day centers in Philadelphia county, Delaware county and Bucks county.

Dr. Raziano has lectured extensively and has been a leader in Innovation and Geriatrics.

In 2012, she received the Physician Executive Health Care Innovation Award from the Philadelphia Business Journal. In 2016, she received the SmartCEO Magazine’s 2016 Philadelphia Executive Management award, and in 2018, she was the recipient of the Dr. Barbara Bell Award for Distinguished Service in the Field of Geriatric Medicine.

Robert is the Executive Director and Founder of IVRHA (International Virtual Reality and Healthcare Association).

In 2009, Robert started Cool Blue Media by organizing the first social media conference on the east coast of the United States, leading to the publication of the text book, "The Big Book of Social Media Case Studies, Stories and Perspectives" and shortly thereafter the only printed magazine covering social media, The Social Media Monthly. In May 2016, he launched VRVoice.co, a content vertical exploring virtual reality in the enterprise. In 2017, Robert started the largest annual conference on virtual reality and healthcare with events taking place both in the US and Europe.

Prior to 2009, Robert was the Senior Director of Global Strategy and Development of IT at Conservation International (CI). Robert joined CI in 2000 to take responsibility for connecting all of CI’s forty field offices to the Internet with broadband connectivity. During his 10 year tenure, he built an international staff of 25 IT professionals.

Robert has over ten years of additional work experience as a systems and sales engineer with various companies including CMGI, Hughes Network Systems, ioWave and Raytheon. Robert has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Villanova University, a master’s degree in environmental science and public policy from Johns Hopkins University, and is ABD at George Mason University.

Dr. Aebersold’s professional and academic career is focused on advancing the science of learning applied in simulation to align clinician and student practice behaviors with research evidence to improve learner and health outcomes.  She focuses her scholarship in both high fidelity and virtual reality simulation and is a national leader and expert in simulation. Her scholarship has culminated in developing the Simulation Model to Improve Learner and Health Outcomes (SMILHO).

XRSI’s Medical XR Adviser, Michelle Aebersold is a Clinical Professor at the University of Michigan School of Nursing and  Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information. Currently, Dr. Aebersold is involved with various research projects including:

• MOSST Chemotherapy Safety 
• We Heart VR 
• Augmented Reality to Improve Stroke Care
• Improving Nursing Students' Resilience to Bullying Behavior
• IMPACTS – Improving Pediatric Acute Care through Simulation Training 
• Closing the loop: new data tools for measuring the change in the quality of nursing education and the value of new approaches to instruction (PI) University of Michigan School of Nursing.

Her interests include:

• Simulation
• Virtual reality
• Augmented reality
• Serious games
• Innovative education methods
• Patient safety

Charles Nduka is a practicing surgeon specialising in restoring facial expressions. He is also a leading researcher in facial paralysis and developed a concept of wearable facial expression biosensing and rehabilitation. His obsession with virtual reality started over 25 years ago when he published a review in the British Journal of Surgery on the use of VR for surgical training. For the last five years he has been focussing on developing VR hardware and software tools for privacy preserving emotional and wellbeing monitoring.

His research is funded by the UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and he collaborates with leading mental health clinicians and researchers internationally. Current research is focussed on the potential for VR to address the problems facing his patients affected by facial disfigurement, particularly mental health conditions such as social anxiety disorder. VR based mental health therapies create particular challenges around data security, privacy, and clinical validation. 

Charles qualified in medicine from both Oxford University and Imperial College and his surgical practice is based at Queen Victoria Hospital in West Sussex, UK. He is also an Honorary Senior Lecturer at Imperial College and Honorary Reader (Associate Professor) at Brighton and Sussex Medical School.

Elena Mercep is a product/software development professional with expertise in regulated industries. In her previous role, as Sr. Product Engineer within the MedTech industry, Elena owned and facilitated product roadmap for the novel medical ultrasound device, including the relevant aspects of product requirements specification, risk management and validation.

As Product Owner, together with the Goodly Innovations team, she is shaping the vision, defining and implementing requirements for the augmented reality (AR) guidance software OptiworX.

Tech entrepreneur focused on digital health and mental well-being, TEDx speaker, and writer.

Biologist, Ph.D. in Neuropharmacology, with International academic research experience in pharmacology, organic chemistry, and molecular biology in the fields of oncology and neuronal metabolism.

Since 2017, CEO and co-founder of Softcare Studios, a digital health startup specialized in developing virtual reality solutions for stress management and therapy education in patients undergoing medical treatments.

Callie has launched and operated innovation labs, accelerators, and hackathons for organizations that include the United States Department of Defense, NYU, Amazon, and the Tri-Institutional Program at Weill Cornell Medicine, The Rockefeller University, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She coached 100+ early-stage digital health entrepreneurs on their path towards growth and fundraising and went on to launch a co-working space’s new location in NYC. Callie’s passion for immersive technology inspired her work developing a collaboration tool for virtual reality during her fellowship at Oculus Launchpad in 2018.

Ryan Cameron has been a serial innovator since 1997.

In 2000, Ryan led a team to create the first interactive versions of the beloved Little Golden Books for Disney Interactive, and then became CTO of an international US-based firm that delivered online education to Fortune 100 corporate employees.  For the next 10 years, Ryan was CTO for online educational companies before starting his own innovative online educational company. He has advised on international boards and organizations as well. Ryan has created online educational products that have won numerous awards and have helped hundreds of thousands of Fortune 500 employees learn important new skills in multi-year award-winning online programs. Joining Copernicus Studios in 2013, he led the interactive division, creating one of the first speech recognition engines tuned to children’s voices to empower early literacy. He founded Electric Puppets in 2016 and, in partnership with the IWK Children's hospital pediatric vision sciences group, has created the first patent-pending Medical VR platform for research and assessment starting with Ophthalmology. Ryan is an avid rare book, art, and antique collector and lives on an acreage in Chester, Nova Scotia.

Skip Rizzo is a clinical psychologist and Director of Medical VR at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies. He is also a Research Professor with the USC Dept. of Psychiatry and School of Gerontology. Over the last 25 years, Skip has conducted research on the design, development, and evaluation of Virtual Reality systems targeting the areas of clinical assessment, treatment, and rehabilitation across the domains of psychological, cognitive, and motor functioning in both healthy and clinical populations. This work has focused on PTSD, TBI, Autism, ADHD, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, and other clinical conditions. In spite of the diversity of these clinical R&D areas, the common thread that drives all of his work with digital technologies involves the study of how Virtual Reality simulations can be usefully applied to human healthcare beyond what’s possible with traditional 20th Century methods. To view some videos on his work, go to his Youtube channel.

Sarah has spent her career working across the interdisciplinary arts, academia, healthcare and technology as a producer, curator, artist and researcher. She graduated from the University of Kent with a First Class Honours in Anthropology with a Year in Japan BSc. Following her degree, she worked with the NHS before moving into contemporary art, worked with organizations including Fabrica Gallery, Lighthouse, The School of Life, The Big Anxiety Festival and Stanford University.

In May 2019 she founded Hatsumi, a research and design studio exploring the intersection of arts, health and immersive technology. We work with patients, artists, researchers and healthcare professionals to develop experiences that challenge how we think and feel about the world and imagine the future of health and wellbeing. She is the producer on Deep, a meditative VR experience controlled by breathing, and the Healthcare Lead for Immerse UK, working to support a community of UK XR healthcare practitioners and find ways that creative technologists, researchers, and healthcare practitioners can work together to create a sustainable future for XR in healthcare.

Leading Technologies Advisor
National Health Service
United Kingdom

Richard passionately believes that education has the power to transform lives. In his role as learning technologies advisor to the NHS, he gets to do just that, by researching and developing new technologies to support every step of a healthcare learners’ education. Throughout his career, Richard has supported the delivery of education and training with health and care organizations across the UK; international development work with governments in Mexico, Malaysia, and South East Asia; and building learning and acting as an ambassador with LearnAppeal in Kenya.

Laura has more than 30 years of software and product development and compliance engineering experience, grounded in several decades of senior leadership roles with R&D and Manufacturing organizations including Medical Devices, Commercial, and Consumer Electronics companies. She has a rich history in compliance engineering holding positions at CSA Group as Senior Manager of Cybersecurity, supporting several industry verticals including Healthcare with cybersecurity testing, security standards compliance, and market access for IoT solutions.  Prior to joining the CSA Group, she served as the Cybersecurity Practice Lead for UL’s Digital Health Service team, supporting medical device software and solutions customers in meeting regulatory and business imperatives for software and cybersecurity assurance. Laura holds a BSEE from the University of Illinois, Urbana, and an MSEE from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, and is currently pursuing a Graduate Degree in Computer Science with a focus on cybersecurity.  She is a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of Illinois and holds the RAC credential from the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society.

Laura Élan has joined XRSI as a Medical XR Advisor supporting the Medical XR Advisory Board with software, cybersecurity, and regulatory topics specific to XR solutions and ecosystems.