Our Leadership Team
Accelerating product development for over 35 years.
Our leadership team is passionate about improving the lives of patients and are committed to quality. With expertise in a variety of areas, our team collaborates with you to meet your project goals.
Neal E. Fearnot, PhD, is President of MED Institute, a full service R&D company supporting clients in bringing their new medical products and technologies to market. Concurrently, he serves as President of Cook Advanced Technologies, whose mission is to develop cutting edge medical products and therapies for patients, as well as Vice President of Cook Group Incorporated, focusing on the potential of new technology and regulatory affairs policy worldwide. Dr. Fearnot has served as the founding President of MED Institute (1983), Cook Biotech (1995) and Cook AT (2009). He has been active in initiatives to promote global harmonization of medical device approval regulations. He is an author on over 150 scientific journal articles and abstracts, and is an inventor on over 100 U.S. and foreign patents. Dr. Fearnot holds a Ph.D. in Electrical/Biomedical Engineering from Purdue University.
William Voorhees, PhD, is Vice President/Chief Science Officer of MED. Prior to joining MED Institute in 1990, Dr. Voorhees conducted a wide variety of original research in applied physiology at the William A. Hillenbrand Biomedical Engineering Center at Purdue University including CPR, transchest cardiac pacing, electroventilation, hyperthermia therapy for solid tumors, hypothermia to protect the myocardium during myocardial infarction, and respiratory function monitoring. He has authored over 70 refereed scientific articles resulting from this research and served as liaison with the R&D Department of Methodist Hospital of Indiana in Indianapolis. Dr. Voorhees earned an A.B. in Biology from Hamilton College and a PhD from the Department of Veterinary Physiology & Pharmacology at Purdue University.
Ted Heise, PhD, is Vice President of Regulatory and Clinical Services at MED Institute. In this capacity, with 25 years of experience, he leads the company in developing scientifically robust regulatory and clinical study strategies for its clients. He is a member of the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society, the American Chemical Society and is a U.S. delegate to the technical committee for international consensus standards that govern biocompatibility testing and clinical investigations of medical devices. Dr. Heise is also active in developing processes to generate real world evidence for medical devices, representing Cook Medical on the corporate stakeholder board for the SVS/Vascular Quality Initiative and participating in projects within MDEpiNet (e.g., RAPID) and Harmonization by Doing. Dr. Heise graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BS in chemistry from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a PhD in analytical chemistry from Iowa State University.
David Gross, PhD, manages the MRI safety evaluations and computational modeling and simulation groups at MED Institute Inc. As a graduate research associate, he was awarded a Pre-Doctoral Fellowship from the American Heart Association (AHA) for his research focusing on improving the MRI safety of patients with implanted cardiovascular devices. Dr. Gross is a member of numerous societies, including the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) and received the Magna Cum Laude Merit Award at the 2016 ISMRM Annual Conference. Additionally, Dr. Gross is a member of the Ethics Subcommittee for the Biomedical Engineering Society. He graduated from Purdue University with a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering and M.S.E. in Interdisciplinary Engineering. Dr. Gross also holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Ohio State University and is a licensed Professional Engineer.
Justin Metcalf is the Director of Engineering Services at MED Institute. He started his career as an engineer at MED Institute over 18 years ago and has worked on many Class II and Class III medical devices in various roles. Many of the devices he has worked on have been first to market or have met an unmet clinical need. These experiences have allowed for development of a unique set of engineering skills. Through this, Justin has worked with regulatory bodies around the globe, has submitted several patents, worked with various physician specialties both in the engineering lab and the operating room, and participated in standardization, all of which he actively enjoys. Justin manages a diverse team of engineers that use first principles of engineering to identify and develop solutions to medical needs. The team works to bridge the gap to commercialization by using our experiences, robust processes and customer focused principles to help patients. Justin holds a BS and MS in engineering from Purdue University.
Justin Renfrow is the Contracts Director and an industry leader in product development, engineering, regulatory affairs, and clinical trial services. He has over 15 years’ experience in medical device development. Justin is actively involved with MED’s clients to help drive emerging medical technologies to market. Since 2004, Justin has held various positions within the Cook organization. As a patented inventor, he is well versed in early concept development and has spent his career with Cook focused on working with physicians and inventors to innovate from the lab to the marketplace. Justin focuses primarily on MED’s contracting and customer service as well as traditional business development activities.