Sr. Vice President, Research & Development, Cyberonics, Inc
Milton M. Morris, Ph.D. joined Cyberonics as Vice President, Research & Development in January 2009. During his tenure with Cyberonics, the R&D organization has developed two human grade implantable pulse generator systems – one system commercialized and the other in human clinical trials, one preclinical grade pulse generator system under valuation with novel intellectual property protected stimulation paradigms, one new pulse generator system with intellectual property protected wireless communication capabilities under development and a novel intellectual property protected non-implantable system capable of detecting seizures for the purpose of event notification and logging. His R&D team has driven FDA and DEKRA approvals of stronger MRI conditional labeling of the VNS Therapy® systems giving patients and physicians access to faster higher resolution 3 Tesla imaging systems. Under Dr. Morris’ leadership, the Cyberonics R&D team has grown over 300%, hiring top medical device talent with relevant skills in ASIC development, neurophysiology/ epilepsy, algorithm development, signal processing, alternative powering, RF communication and development of class III active implantable medical devices. Dr. Morris joined Cyberonics from InnerPulse Corporation; a privately held cardiology focused medical technology company in the Research Triangle Park (North Carolina), where he had served as Director, Program Management and Operations since November 2007. Prior to InnerPulse, Dr. Morris was employed by Guidant Corporation and its successor, Boston Scientific Corporation. Over a period of 11 years, he held several positions, including Principal Senior Research Scientist; Director, Research & Development; and Director, Marketing where he was a franchise leader for both the implantable pacemaker and defibrillator businesses. Prior to joining Guidant, Dr. Morris spent 5 years working as a Research Assistant in the Medical Computing Laboratory at the University of Michigan in collaboration with the electrophysiology group at the University of Michigan hospital and the Michigan Heart and Vascular Institute. During this period, Dr. Morris was awarded fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in support of his research on the development of novel approaches to low power arrhythmia classification algorithms designed for implantable defibrillators. Dr. Morris is named as an inventor on over 15 patents and an author on 19 peer reviewed publications, book chapters, abstracts and scientific presentations.
Dr. Morris has served as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the University of Minnesota where he taught Control Systems and served on thesis committees. Additionally, Dr. Morris has been a member of the University of Michigan Rackham Dean’s Advisory Board, the University of Houston Biomedical Engineering Industrial Advisory Board, and the Advisory Board for the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue.
Dr. Morris holds a Masters in Business Administration from Kellogg School of Management, a Masters and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University.