Ellis Garai , PhD

Fellow
Research and Development
Stanford University
Stanford, CA

Lucile Packard Fellow, 2009-10
Dr. Ellis Garai graduated summa cum laude from the UCLA with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering (Design & Manufacturing concentration). He completed his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering (Biodesign & Mechatronics concentration) at Stanford University. He also completed his Ph.D. at Stanford in Mechanical Engineering. His thesis dissertation was focused on a low profile, opto-electro-mechanical device that can be used in conjunction with endoscopy or as a hand-held device to detect tumor-targeting nanoparticles for early cancer detection. Ellis had published several articles in scientific journals (Journal of Biomedical Optics and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) and has several intellectual property filings with the USPTO based on this work.

Ellis has worked for Advanced Bionics (Boston Scientific) as part of the part of the R&D and the new product development (a.k.a. Emerging Indications) team. He was responsible for driving forward the sacral nerve stimulation device for urge incontinence, and also contributed to the deep brain and spinal cord simulation projects. While there, he enjoyed working closely with managers, physicians, engineers, and patent attorneys. He participated in brainstorming sessions, prototyping, design input/output documentation, and patent/journal searches. His work there resulted in over 15 patents filed internally and 3 which were filed with the USPTO. He also worked on product development for Vibrynt, and early stage medical device company that was spun out of Silicon Valley medical device incubator, ExploraMed.

As an entrepreneur, Ellis has worked on several early stage medical device ventures. He participated in the Stanford GSB Summer Institute for Entrepreneurship and the Advanced Invention to Venture workshop in Boston. Ellis led a team to win first place in the BMEidea Competition and the Stanford Entrepreneurship Challenge, second place in the Babson School of Business Entrepreneurship & Innovation Competition, and a spot among the top ten finalists in the National Collegiate Inventors Alliance Venture Well Cohort. Articles detailing some of these successes have been published in the Stanford Daily, medGadget.com, Entrepreneur.com, and Inventor's Digest Magazine. This momentum resulted in the founding of his first company, Logimed Inc.

As a Stanford Biodesign Innovation Fellow, Ellis developed products for three different unmet clinical needs. This activity resulted in Ellis' co-founding of a venture backed start-up company, which was based on the intellectual property he developed as a Biodesign Fellow.

Throughout high school and college he was a competitive gymnast. During his free time Ellis enjoys jazz and racquetball. Ellis has represented Stanford in two inter-collegiate racquetball competitions.