Dr. Paul Magnin

Paul Magnin spent 17 years as a key contributor to Hewlett-Packard’s Ultrasound Imaging business. He was the R&D Manager of Hewlett-Packard’s Imaging Systems business from 1992 through 1995 and General Manager from 1996 through 1998. From 1999 through 2003, Dr. Magnin was the President and CEO of LightLab Imaging. LightLab Imaging, a medical device start-up company, brought to market a proprietary technology that employs infrared light to make images with resolution on the micron scale for Cardiology, Endoscopy, Neurology, and Surgical Microscopy. He managed the company from the start-up phase through the sale of the company to Goodman Ltd. Subsequently he was the Founder and CEO of Novelis, Inc. a privately funded start-up focused on guiding therapy for crossing Chronic Total Occlusions. Novelis was sold to Volcano Corporation in 2008.

Dr. Magnin is an advisor and board member of a number of medical device start-up companies and was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Ultrasonix Medical Corp. in Vancouver, BC. He holds over 20 patents and has authored over 20 scientific journal articles. He has been studying and working in medical imaging since 1977 while an undergraduate at Princeton University. In 1981 he completed his doctorate in Biomedical Engineering at Duke University where he was part of the Ultrasonic Imaging research team.

Dr. Christoph Schaeff

Christoph Schaeff is currently head of Strategic Business Development of the Microsurgery business unit at Carl Zeiss Meditec AG. In this role, he is responsible for the unit’s strategic development, the development and evaluation of business plans, the search for mergers and acquisitions, and market intelligence. The Microsurgery business unit includes medical devices and consumables, which involves surgical and diagnostic microscopes for specialties such as surgical and diagnostic ENT customers.

Christoph Schaeff was previously a Senior Consultant at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants GmbH with functional focus on growth strategies, market entry or market penetration strategies, commercial due diligence. He earned his PhD in Physics (Quantum Optics) from the University of Vienna, Austria.

Dr. Lidija Marusic

Dr. Lidija Marusic is interim vice president of investment and managing director of the Nova Scotia First Fund at Invest Nova Scotia (formerly Innovacorp). As part of the senior management team, she leads Invest Nova Scotia’s work to find, fund and foster innovative Nova Scotia start-ups that strive to change the world.

Prior to her current role, Lidija was an investment director at Invest Nova Scotia, where her focus was on pre-seed and seed investment opportunities in the life sciences (i.e., human health) sectors.

Joining Invest Nova Scotia in 2006, Lidija built the organization’s life sciences commercialization and venture capital practice. Today, in addition to her senior management role at the organization, Lidija manages a thriving portfolio of companies and fosters the commercialization of new medical innovations by guiding researchers and emerging start-up founders.

Before joining Invest Nova Scotia, Lidija worked at MDS Capital and its seed fund MedInnova Partners, focusing on commercializing biomedical discoveries.

Lidija holds a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Zagreb in Croatia, a PhD in molecular genetics from the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy, and an MBA from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

Lidija is a board member at Covina Biomedical, Audioptics Medical, Axem Neurotechnology, Emagix, CVCA (Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association) and BioNova. She is a board observer at Densitas and Spring Loaded Technology, and a member of the investment committee at MEDTEQ.

Dr. Dan MacDougall

Dan MacDougall is a co-founder and the Chief Executive Officer at Audioptics medical. During his PhD work in Biomedical Engineering at Dalhousie University, he brought the technology underlying Ossiview from scientific inception, through benchtop engineering prototypes, and onto early clinical validation, and he has since led its commercialization effort at Audioptics. In his capacity as CEO, he has cultivated new scientific partnerships with global clinical collaborators, established Audioptics’ strategic partnership with Zeiss Meditec, and closed a $1.9M seed investment round.