Neurotech Reports Announces Winners of 2013 Gold Electrode Awards 

Neurotech Reports, the publisher of the Neurotech Business Report newsletter, announced the winners of the 2013 Gold Electrode Awards, selected in five categories by the editorial staff of the publication. The awards were presented at the 2013 Neurotech Leaders Forum in San Francisco on October 14.

The Gold Electrode Award for Best New Product was presented to Second Sight Medical Products of Valencia, CA for its Argus II retinal prosthesis. The device, which restores visual input to individuals with blindness caused by retinitis pigmentosa, was approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration earlier this year.

The award for Most Promising Startup was presented to Mainstay Medical Ltd., a medical device startup based in Ireland that is developing a new form of implantable stimulation system to treat chronic low back pain.

The Gold Electrode Award for Most Valuable Non-Profit was presented to the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.

The award for Outstanding Financial Professional was presented to Robert Schmidt, CEO of Cleveland Medical Devices Inc. Neurotech Reports editors recognized Schmidt’s contribution to the neurosensing and neurodiagnostics industry, spinning off Great Lakes Neurotechnologies, which builds assessment products for movement disorders, and NeuroWave, a pioneer in brain-state monitoring. Previous winners in this category include medical device heavyweights Al Mann, Mir Imran, and Wilson Greatbatch.                                                                                                                     

The award for Neurotechnology Researcher of the Year was presented to Philip Kennedy, M.D., Ph.D., CEO of Neural Signals Inc. in Duluth, GA. The editors recognized Dr. Kennedy’s pioneering work in brain-computer interfaces, restoring communication capabilities to locked-in individuals, and most recently, for his novel work relating to phoneme recognition. Previous winners in this category include Michael Merzenich of UC San Francisco, Karl Deisseroth of Stanford University, Cameron McIntyre of the Cleveland Clinic, and Mark Humayun of University of Southern California.