Dr. Josh Makower is The Yock Family Professor of Medicine and of Bioengineering at the Stanford University Schools of Medicine and Engineering and the Director of the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign, the program he co-founded with Dr. Paul Yock twenty years ago. Josh helped create the fundamental structure of the Center’s core curriculum and is the chief architect of what is now called “The Biodesign Process.” Over the past 20 years since Josh and Paul founded Biodesign, this curriculum and the associated textbook has been used at Stanford and across the world to train hundreds of thousands of students, faculty and industry leaders on the Biodesign process towards the advancement of medical innovation for the improvement of patient care.
Josh has practiced these same techniques directly as the Founder & Executive Chairman of ExploraMed, a medical device incubator, creating 10 companies since 1995. Transactions from the ExploraMed portfolio include NeoTract, acquired by Teleflex, Acclarent, acquired by J&J, EndoMatrix, acquired by C.R. Bard & TransVascular, acquired by Medtronic. Other ExploraMed/NEA ventures include Moximed, Revelle Aesthetics, X9 and Willow.
Josh is also a Senior Advisors to Patient Square Capital, and an Advisory Venture Partner with Sofinnova Partners. Josh serves on the boards of Elevage, VentureWell, Revelle Aesthetics, ExploraMed, Moximed, Willow, X9 and Coravin. Josh holds over 300 patents and patent applications. He received an MBA from Columbia University, an MD from the NYU School of Medicine, a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT.
Josh is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of The National Academy of Inventors and The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and was awarded the Coulter Award for Healthcare Innovation by the Biomedical Engineering Society in 2018.