Adam Sharkawy

Dr. Sharkawy is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Material Impact, a unique venture fund that focuses on investing in and building companies with material-based technology innovations making a large impact. He serves as member of the Board of Directors for many companies including Soft Robotics, Fusion Coolant Technologies, NextGen Jane, Orbion Space Technologies, Folio Photonics, Nohbo, and BloomerTech where he serves as Chair. He also serves on the Graduate School Board at Duke University and as a Chief Mentor for NYU Stern Endless Frontiers. Previously, Adam held a series of operating roles on the executive leadership team of publicly traded healthcare companies such as the Medicines Company where he led a number of acquisitions and ran the Surgical Care division, Smith & Nephew’s Emerging Market division, Abbott’s Medical Device division, and Guidant’s Vascular Intervention division. Prior to large corporate roles, Adam was an entrepreneur in the Silicon Valley where he helped start Ventrica (technology acquired by Medtronic), Heartport (acquired by Johnson and Johnson) and Advanced Cardiovascular Systems (acquired by Eli Lilly). Dr. Sharkawy received his Ph.D. from Duke University in Biomaterials / Biomedical Engineering, an MSME in Chaos Theory from Texas A&M and a BSME from the American University, Cairo. He is a scientific inventor and holds 23 issued U.S. patents and numerous international patents.