Dennis W. Wahr, MD
Lutonix President/CEO/Co-Founder/Board Member

Dennis has more than 25 years of experience in medical device development, management and operations — as well as in clinical practice as a board-certified interventional cardiologist.

Dennis was the co-founder, President, and CEO of Velocimed LLC, which was acquired by St. Jude Medical in April 2005. He led Velocimed through four financing events that funded the development of minimally invasive cardiovascular and neurovascular devices, as well as the sponsorship of clinical trials in the U.S. and abroad.

Prior to Velocimed, Dennis practiced as an interventional cardiologist for 15 years. During his clinical practice, he served as Director of Interventional Cardiology and Chief of Cardiology at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital (Ann Arbor, MI). He performed his fellowship in cardiovascular medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He served his residency in internal medicine at the University of Michigan. Wahr received his MD from Wayne State University School of Medicine.

Past medical advisory board memberships include Scimed, Percusurge Inc., Pharmacyclics Inc., and Boston Scientific, among others. Previous board of director memberships include Accumetrics, Velocimed and IDev Technologies.

Lixiao Wang, PhD
Chief Technology Officer/Co-Founder/Board Member

Lixiao has over 20 years of experience in medical device development, management and operations. A member of ACS, APS, SPE and the Society for Biomaterials, Lixiao is an inventor and an expert in materials and drug delivery for medical devices. He’s a certified patent agent with more than 200 applications and issued U.S. patents.

For four years, Lixiao worked as an R&D Director for ev3, actively leading research and development for self-expanded stents, balloon-expanded stents and balloon catheters for peripheral indications. Products released to market included Everflex® self-expanded stents, Rapid Exchange Carotid stent, Protégé® self-expanded long stent, Primus™ balloon-expanded stent, and PTA balloon catheters.

Prior to ev3, Lixiao spent 14 years at Scimed/Boston Scientific, as R&D Fellow, R&D Manager and Scientist. He led the successful development of multiple balloon products, including the Maverick®, NC Shadow™, NC Ranger™, NIR™ on Ranger™, Express® and CRE balloon dilator for esophageal application. While at SciMed, Wang led their early drug-eluting stent research efforts.

Lixiao received his PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, his MS in polymer science and engineering from the Academia, Sinica, China, and his BS in polymer chemistry from Nanjing University.

Shawn McCormick
Chief Operating Officer

Shawn McCormick served as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of ev3, Inc. from January 2009 until August 2010. ev3 was traded on the NASDAQ Stock Market prior to being sold to Covidien in July 2010 for $2.6 billion.

Prior to joining ev3, Mr. McCormick served as Vice President, Corporate Development at Medtronic, Inc., where he was responsible for leading Medtronic’s worldwide business development activities, and previously had served in key corporate and divisional financial leadership roles, including Vice President, Corporate Technology and New Ventures and Vice President, Finance for Medtronic’s Spinal, Biologics and Navigation business. Prior to Medtronic, Shawn was with the public accounting firm KPMG Peat Marwick. Mr. McCormick earned his Master of Business Administration from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management and his Bachelor of Science in Accounting from Arizona State University.

Leslie Trigg
Executive Vice President, Marketing and Commercial Strategy

Leslie Trigg previously served as Chief Business Officer of AccessClosure, leading the sales and marketing efforts behind the launch of a new vascular closure device. Prior to AccessClosure, she led the commercial introduction of a new PAD therapy as VP of Marketing for FoxHollow Technologies. Leslie also has held commercialization roles of increasing responsibility at Guidant, Pro-Duct Health and Cytyc. She currently serves on the board of directors for Cardiovascular Systems, Inc., a publicly traded medical device company in the peripheral vascular space. Leslie received her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and her MBA from the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley.

Chris Barry
Vice President Research & Development/Operations

With Lutonix since October 2007, Chris has nearly 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and medical device industry. Prior to joining Lutonix, Chris was at Abbott Laboratories, where he held a number of R&D, operations and quality assurance positions. At Abbott Vascular, he was the Program Director for Abbott’s next generation drug-eluting stent program. Chris has a BS in chemistry from the University of Notre Dame.

Kari Kubesh
Vice President Finance & Administration

With Lutonix since June 2007, Kari has nearly two decades of finance experience. Prior to joining Lutonix, Kari worked in finance at St. Jude Medical, managing the integration of Velocimed, an interventional cardiology company commercializing innovative technologies, including PFO closure, embolic protection and guidewire control. Before that she was with Deloitte & Touche, concentrating on the life science and emerging markets industries. Kari is a CPA (inactive) with a BA in accounting from the University of St. Thomas.

Debra Lano
Vice President Regulatory & Quality

With Lutonix since October 2009, Debra has more than 25 years of experience in the medical device industry. She has held positions from individual contributor to senior management in Regulatory Affairs, Quality Assurance and Clinical Research. Debra’s industry experience includes an 18-year tenure at SciMed Life Systems Inc./ Boston Scientific Corporation. Experienced in developing and implementing successful regulatory and compliance strategies for class III cardiovascular devices, she has also been a principal regulatory advisor for contract research organizations, and managed her own regulatory consultancy. Debra has a BA in biology with a microbiology emphasis from St. Cloud State University.

Jim Pavliska
Clinical Director

With Lutonix since June 2008, Jim has more than a decade of direct cardiovascular clinical research experience. After coordinating interventional research at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, Jim went on to manage regional field research activities for the California-based start-up PercuSurge, which was acquired by Medtronic. After expanding his research experience at Medtronic, he went on to build the clinical program at Velocimed, which was later acquired by St. Jude Medical. While at St. Jude, Jim held the title of Director of Interventional Research. His unique research experience and passion for cardiovascular research bring valuable insight to our clinical program. Jim has a BS in biomedical science from Texas A&M University.

Scott Naisbitt, MD, PhD
Scientific Director

With Lutonix since June 2007, Scott has nearly a decade of experience in medical device and biopharmaceutical venture capital and development. Prior to joining Lutonix, Scott was a principal and entrepreneur-in-residence at the healthcare fund RiverVest Venture Partners, as well as an associate at the medical device incubator Seedling Enterprises. He is a former board member of two early stage interventional cardiovascular companies, and worked in research labs at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Scott was awarded the NIH Medical Scientist Training Program Scholarship by Harvard Medical School. He has a MD and a PhD from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.