To meet the growing demands of customers and to support its existing Nitinol device and component contract manufacturing programs, NDC continues to develop deep bench strength within its technical team and is pleased to announce the following organizational changes:

NDC’s founder Tom Duerig, has stepped into the Chief Technology Officer role. In this capacity, Tom drives NDC to continually seek and improve technologies that enable the creation of innovative medical devices. Tom served as the president of NDC since its inception in 1991 and through its acquisition by Johnson & Johnson in 1997. While at Johnson & Johnson, he was instrumental in the development of the SMART stent line of products, the TrapEase filter, and several other products within the company’s Cordis division. Tom also served on the Cordis management board and the Advanced R&D group. Tom co-founded the Society of Shape Memory and Superelastic Technologies (SMST) and has authored more than one hundred patents and publications in the field of shape memory alloys. Tom received his B.S. in Physics from Lehigh University and his M.S., M.E., and Ph.D. in Materials Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Christine Trepanier’s role with the company has expanded and she now serves as Sr. Director, Process Engineering. Christine manages an expansive team that ensures robust manufacturing processes are in place for new and existing customer programs. With twenty years of experience working with process development, corrosion behavior and biocompatibility of Nitinol implants, Christine is recognized by the industry and by the FDA as an expert in the field of surface engineering and corrosion of Nitinol. Christine chaired the group that published ASTM F2129, which outlines the procedure of conducting cyclic potentiodynamic polarization corrosion tests on small medical devices, has published multiple papers and has presented at a myriad of industry conferences. Christine holds a B.S. in Materials Engineering and a M.S. in Bioengineering from École Polytechnique of Montreal.

Kelly Pike has joined NDC as a Sr. Scientific Fellow Consultant. Kelly brings to NDC years of experience taking medical devices from inception to commercialization – he combines Nitinol technical excellence with an in-depth understanding of the R&D functions within large medical device organizations. Through his prior technical leadership roles within Abbott Vascular, Guidant, Boston Scientific and Applied Medical he has interacted with a variety of medical devices: AAA, DES, carotid stents, biliary stents and balloon expandable stents. Kelly holds a B.S. in Industrial Technology from San Diego State University, a certificate in Biomedical Engineering from UC Irvine and a certificate in Manufacturing Engineering from UCLA.

Ali Shamimi has joined NDC as a Research Fellow after spending the last four years with the MED Institute at Cook Medical. Ali has an extensive background in processing structure property relationships in alloys, mechanical behavior, fatigue and fracture, corrosion, materials selection and failure analysis. He is experienced in research and development of class II & III medical devices, design and process verification & validation testing, risk analysis, and design of experiments for 510(k) and premarket approval (PMA) submissions to the FDA. Ali holds a B.S. in Materials Science from Sharif University of Technology and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Materials Science from Case Western Reserve University.

Dean Schauer, Chief Executive Officer of NDC noted, “We are delighted that we have been able to add Kelly and Ali to our Industry Leading Team of Nitinol Experts. The combination of Kelly and Ali along with the expanded roles that Tom and Christine have taken will allow NDC to continue to provide unparalleled technical expertise and customer support to the medical device industry. We are very proud of the team we have built at NDC and are excited about what the future holds for our company.”

For more information about NDC, please contact [email protected].