Management Team
Jan Östman
President
Jan is a veteran of the VR and simulation industry and a creative and empathic leader with experience in operations, strategy, sales, marketing, and partnership development. Jan was an early employee at Mimic Technologies where he was instrumental in growing the company and establish it as a leader in the robotic surgery simulation space. Most recently he held senior leadership positions with Swedish-based medical simulation companies Surgical Science and SenseGraphics.
Jan holds a Master of Science in Industrial Design Engineering from Luleå University of Technology and earned an MBA with Honors from the University of Washington Foster School of Business.
Jeff Berkley, PhD
Founder and Chief Innovation Officer
Dr. Jeff Berkley is the Chief Innovation Officer and Founder of Mimic Technologies. Jeff brings decades of experience in the mathematics, engineering and healthcare disciplines focused on technology and virtual reality applications.
Jeff has applied his knowledge of haptic feedback and continuum mechanic-based tissue modeling to surgery simulation. He is a leader in the fields of haptics, surgery simulation and real-time finite element modeling. He is well known as a thought leader through his speaking engagements at academic settings and in print. He has served as a reviewer and authored articles for journals including IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Modeling, Virtual Reality and Electronic Journal of Haptics Research and Medical Imaging.
Jeff has also served as an affiliate assistant professor of Industrial Engineering at the University of Washington, where he taught software development for virtual reality applications. He advanced his real-time algorithms while receiving his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Washington’s Human Interface Technology Laboratory (HIT Lab), one of the world’s premier virtual reality labs. He obtained his MS in Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University.
Chris Simmonds
Vice President Surgical Robotics
Chris started working with Mimic in 2014. He has 30 years experience in Sales & Marketing in the IT & healthcare business. Most recently he has held Senior Marketing roles with Intuitive Surgical and Boston Scientific in the US & Europe where among his responsibilities was the development of their online interactions. Chris’s key areas of expertise include: Training | Communications| Marketing | Strategy Development | Digital Infrastructure | e-Business | e-Commerce | General Management.
Chris holds Bachelor of Science from University College London and PGCE from St Edmund’s Hall Oxford University.
John Lenihan Jr., MD, FACOG
Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer
Dr. Lenihan is a nationally recognized minimally invasive gynecologist from Tacoma WA. After graduating from the USAF Academy in Colorado Springs, he trained at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston TX, completed an OB-GYN residency at Madigan Army Medical Center in Washington State, worked as an OB-GYN in the Air Force for the next ten years, and then transferred to the AF Reserves where he worked as a flight surgeon and medical commander until 2008.
He moved to Tacoma after leaving the active duty Air Force and has spent the last 35 years there specializing in minimally invasive surgery. He pioneered many procedures in the Northwest including the first operative hysteroscopy, CO2 lasers, laparoscopic hysterectomies and minimally invasive pelvic prolapse repairs. He was the first GYN surgeon in the North West to do robotic surgery soon after it was approved by the FDA in Mar 2005 and is now recognized as an Epicenter Surgeon by Intuitive Surgical for his innovation, teaching and dedication to advancing minimally invasive surgery for women.
He has authored many scientific papers and book chapters on robotic and laparoscopic surgery. Combining his aviation background with medicine, he was one of the first to recommend utilizing simulation for robotic surgical training and was responsible for developing simulation based standards for credentialing and privileging that have now become the national standard. He belongs to many prestigious societies including the AAGL and is a founding member of the Society of Robotic Surgeons. He is also an Associate Clinical Professor in the OB-GYN Department at the University of Washington School of Medicine. When not involved in his professional activities, he enjoys skiing, scuba diving, wine touring and hanging out with his grandchildren.
Mert Sedef
Vice President Software Development
Mert has more than 18 years of Surgical Simulation, Physically-based Simulation, Computer Haptics, and Project Management experience. He joined Mimic Technologies, Inc. in 2009, and contributed to a wide variety of products by designing and developing applications in cutting-edge technologies like Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Real-time 3D Simulation, and Robotic Simulation as well as facilitating the company’s software development process until 2017. He has been leading the company’s software development efforts since 2017.
Prior to joining Mimic Technologies, Inc. Mert conducted scientific research with and learned from world-renowned Haptics, Mechatronics, and Robotics authority Prof. Dr. Cagatay Basdogan, and world-renowned Computational Geometry, Physically-based Simulation and Computer Graphics researchers Prof. Dr. Ming Lin and Prof. Dr. Dinesh Manocha. Mert’s contributions to Medical Simulation & Training, Robotics and Computer Haptics have been recognized by leading scientific researchers worldwide.
Mert holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Master of Science degree in Computational Sciences and Engineering, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from Koc University in Istanbul.
Bryan Nolin
Vice President Direct Sales
Bryan is a driven sales leader with 20 years of experience of growing disruptive technologies within challenging markets. He is a business planner with expertise in creating processes for scalable, sustainable, and reproducible results. Bryan has an expertise in alignment of internal and external team members to find and develop new markets and increase market share. He developed strategic markets in the Cardiothoracic, General, GYN, MIS, Urology, Robotic, Endoscopic/Laparoscopic, and Critical Care markets at Intuitive Surgical and other start up medical device companies spanning capital and disposable product lines. Bryan's key areas of expertise include: Sales Management | Communications | Sales Process Development | Leadership.
Bryan holds a Bachelors Degree from The University of Central Florida
Martin Jansson
Global Head of Sales
Martin has over 25 years experience working in sales, marketing and management. He began his career in sales in the pharma industry before moving into marketing and communications with Volvo Trucks in 2008. He joined Surgical Science in 2014 as Director International Business Development and became Head of Global Sales in 2021.
Anand Malpani
Director of Data Science
Anand brings a decade long experience in surgical data science and its applications to training and education. He is responsible for developing the machine learning and data science focused solutions for surgical simulation and training. He is actively supporting research projects and partnerships with industry and academia. He is an active participant at engineering and clinical conferences. He has been a member of SAGES (Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons) as well as ASE (Association for Surgical Education). He has been a member of the SAGES Artificial Intelligence Taskforce since its inception.
Prior to joining Mimic, Anand was at The Johns Hopkins University for 10 years working within the Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare as an assistant research scientist focused on AI for surgery projects. He graduated with a Ph.D. in computer science from JHU in 2017 wherein his research theme was automated virtual coaching for surgical training. During this time, he has actively worked with clinicians at JHU and beyond from different specialties including gynecology, general surgery, head and neck surgery, ophthalmologic surgery, and urology.
His interests beyond virtual reality, simulation, and data science are human computer interaction, crowdsourcing, and human subjects behavioral research.
Anand grew up in Mumbai, India and got a B.Tech. in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. After that, he made Baltimore in Maryland his home before moving to Seattle to join the Mimic team.