Jonathan Fay, Ph.D.

Jonathan Fay focuses his efforts on educating and inspiring the next generation of medical and technology innovators.  Dr. Fay brings his real-world experience of developing three first-of-kind medical products to the university.  In the Advanced Medical Product Engineering and Development (AMPED) Master’s program, his course focuses on leadership in the MedTech industry and expands students’ knowledge of MedTech business, risk-based project management, and contributing to the multidisciplinary environment of medical device development.  Dr. Fay also manages the NSF Innovation-Corps program (NSF I-Corps) for the Great Lakes Region.  This training educates PhD, Postdocs, and Faculty on identifying opportunities for their research to go beyond the lab and make an impact on the US economy and society.

Jonathan is a former startup executive from the medical device industry. His experiences center on the early phases of product development, including building the cross-disciplinary R&D team and running first-in-man clinical trials. Before coming the University of Michigan, Jonathan was the COO/CTO of EarLens Corporation. In addition to his operational role, he raised capital from a variety of sources including SBIRs, angels, strategic partners, and VCs.  Prior to EarLens, Jonathan had senior operating roles at Apieron Biosystem and Natus Medical Inc. Jonathan has over 40 patents and received his PhD in Biomechanics from Stanford.

Professor Fay’s lab focuses on how educational interventions and social networks influence the entrepreneurial mindset and subsequent technology diffusion and commercialization. His lab studies the interplay of how social networks, technology advancements, and business practices lead to the adoption of certain technologies but not others. Most previous research has focused on the attributes of the individual innovators or the technology itself and tries to assess which factors are most important for driving adoption. However, the history of innovation is littered with examples of chance meetings, disparate ideas coming together, and nearly simultaneous invention by several groups. In each of these examples, the role of the network and relationships that surround any particular innovator and technology is absolutely critical yet is often lost because of human’s innate attraction to the hero/lone inventor narratives. The network and relationships of an innovator are a large determinant of success. There is a high degree of risk and ambiguity with any innovation project. Therefore, there must be a high degree of mutual trust between actors within the network. Mutual trust develops slowly in relationships which means the social networks needed for innovation and entrepreneurship develop over long periods of time. Other research teams have noted the lack of diversity in innovation and entrepreneurship activities (e.g. VC funding rates). However, why this occurs has not been adequately explained. Future research will explore the development of high-trust social networks, how that impacts the success of innovators, and how that influences the diversity of innovators as well as the effectiveness of interventions to address these issues.

Research Areas:

Biomechanics, Biomedical Innovation, Engineering Education

• Hub Director, NSF I-Corps Hub: Great Lakes Region

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• Involved in promoting and supporting the Coulter Translational Research program within BME