Katherine Reuther, PhD, MBA Named New Executive Director for Penn Health-Tech (PHT)

Penn Health-Tech, Penn Engineering, and Penn Medicine are excited to announce that Dr. Katherine (Katie) Reuther will join us as the new Executive Director of the Penn Center for Health-Devices and Technology (Penn Health-Tech), beginning mid-July 2021. Dr. Reuther will also be joining the School of Engineering and Applied Science faculty as Practice Associate Professor in Bioengineering.

Dr. Reuther is a role model for biomedical innovation, linking formal training in engineering and entrepreneurship with deep practical experience in leading technologies through the commercialization pipeline. Dr. Reuther graduated with her Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering, Magna cum Laude, from the College of New Jersey; she obtained her Ph.D. in Bioengineering at Penn in the laboratory of Dr. Louis Soslowsky and completed her MBA at Columbia, where she currently is a Senior Lecturer in Design, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. During her tenure at Columbia, Dr. Reuther helped create and led Columbia’s Biomedical Engineering Technology Accelerator (BiomedX), overseeing more than 60 technologies leading to $80M in follow-on funding and 18 licenses to start-ups or start-ups industry.  Introducing both new courses and a new curriculum in biomedical innovation, Dr. Reuther was recently awarded Columbia’s highest teaching honor, the “2021 Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching,” this Spring as a recognition of her excellence in teaching and dedication to students.

Katie has extensive experience in developing and translating early-stage medical technologies and discoveries and providing formal educational training for aspiring medical entrepreneurs.  Dr. Reuther served as Director of Masters’ Studies for the Department of Biomedical Engineering and spearheaded the development of a graduate-level medical innovation program, including an interdisciplinary course available to scientists, engineers, and clinicians. Dr. Reuther provided advising and educational support to more than 100 student/faculty teams and start-ups, as they worked to develop and commercialize medical technologies. She will bring these extensive skills to PHT and Penn Bioengineering in two new, hands-on graduate courses in medical innovation centered around Penn Health-Tech ventures.

Dr. Reuther significantly strengthens Penn’s national visibility in medical innovation, as she serves as a consultant for Biocomx, an organization that trains and supports researchers, professionals, and early-stage companies in commercializing medical technologies. In this role, she has served as a project manager for several NIH programs, including the Concept to Clinic: Commercializing Innovation (C3i) Program and the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative. She is also a nationally trained NIH I-Corps instructor. She is a co-founder of Syntegrity Biomedical, an orthopedic medical device start-up.

Please join us in welcoming Dr. Reuther to Penn. We are excited to have her lead Penn Health-Tech into the next phase of its exciting growth.

We would all like to thank Glory Durham and Mohit Prajapati for their incredible extra efforts during our Executive Director search.

Brian Litt, MD – Director, PHT

Jonathan Epstein, MD, Ph.D. – Executive Vice Dean and Chief Scientific Officer, Penn Medicine

David Meaney, Ph.D. – Senior Associate Dean, Penn Engineering

Dawn Bonnell, Ph.D. – Senior Vice Provost for Research

Ravi Radhakrishnan, Ph.D. – Chair, Bioengineering