Thomas J. Fogarty , MD, PhD

President
Research and Development
Fogarty Research & Development
Portola Valley, CA

Thomas J. Fogarty, M.D., is a renowned cardiovascular surgeon, a successful entrepreneur, and not to mention an award-winning vintner. Perhaps he is best known for inventing and patenting the Fogarty Balloon Catheter, a device which has revolutionized not only vascular surgery but the medical field overall. He has been the founder/co-founder and chairman of the board of more than 33 business and research companies all of which are based on devices designed and developed by Fogarty Engineering Inc. In 1993, Dr. Fogarty founded Three Arch Partners, a venture capital firm that invests in new healthcare companies. In 2001, Dr. Fogarty was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He has also received numerous other awards such as the Inventor of the Year in 1980, an Honorary Doctorate from Xavier University in 1987, and the AAMI Foundation Laufman-Greatbatch Prize in 2000. Dr. Fogarty began teaching surgery at Stanford in 1969 and continued as a professor of surgery at Stanford University where he performed both cardiac and peripheral vascular surgery until 2007. After leaving Stanford, he founded the Thomas Fogarty Institute for Innovation currently located in Mountain View California. The Institute is a non-profit organization that mentors and trains medical innovators. Dr. Fogarty, along with biomedical design engineers at Fogarty Research, developed a number of balloon devices that are used in laparoscopic hernia repair and other laparoscopy-assisted cardiovascular procedures. Other commercially successful medical products designed by the Fogarty engineering group include a minimally invasive device for breast cancer diagnosis and therapy, and also a self-expanding stent-graft used to treat critical aortic aneurysms via a minimally invasive technique. Dr. Fogarty graduated Xavier UNiversity with a B.A. degree in Biology. He went on to obtain his M.D. from the Cincinnati College of Medicine in 1960. He was also an intern at the University of Oregon Medical School in Portland Oregon where he also completed his surgical residency.