Michael P. Schaller , BSME

Fellow


Stanford, CA

2010-11 Fogarty Fellow
Before beginning the Biodesign Fellowship in 2010, Michael was a Senior Design Engineer at Cardica, a medical device company that designs and manufactures stapling technology for cardiothoracic surgery. During his 4 years there, he designed and developed three anastomotic devices, participating in brainstorming, prototyping, designing, testing, and debugging phases. In his latest role at the company, Michael co-led the technical aspects of a second-generation product, following the CABG device from the ideation phase to full-scale manufacturing.

Michael has experience with a variety of manufacturing techniques such as machining and stamping, in addition to more uncommon methods like metal injection molding (MIM) and Nitinol shape setting amongst others. At Cardica he was a R&D departmental leader of Finite Element Analysis (FEA). He has worked on multiple Design Verifications and Validations, leading him into hospital operating rooms where he completed animal testing in collaboration with Intuitive Surgical.

Prior to Cardica, Michael completed his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Mechatronics in 2005 from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. His senior design project was a tripod robot, which was ultimately chosen for presentation at the 2005 Capstone Design Exhibition in Seoul, South Korea.

Michael was drawn to the Biodesign Fellowship because of the opportunity to focus on and practice the innovation process. He intends to apply these principles throughout his career as a medical device entrepreneur. His two particular interests within biomedical design are cost-effective innovations and robotics.

In his spare time, Michael enjoys flying airplanes, surfing, and submitting to the New Yorker caption contest (with little success to date). He is an inventor on 7 utility patent applications and 2 provisional patents.