Albert Rodriguez is Velentium’s Director of Human Factors Engineering (HFE). Albert’s career began when he switched his major from mechanical engineering to software engineering at the University of Houston Clearlake. One of his early projects out of school was in robotics, designing a system that trained astronauts to operate a robot arm in space. The training took place in gravity, but the software and mechanics of the training system had to mimic zero-G behavior. Albert became fascinated with interface design and interface engineering, especially when the opportunity came to work alongside an MIT PhD candidate studying HFE. Together, they were able to redesign a two-astronaut robotic arm control system with a much simpler one-man system. From then on, Albert was hooked.
“I surrounded myself with books and learned everything I could about HFE,” he recalls. “I love everything in this space, from how early word processing programs dropped the ball by requiring manual saves, to how Pampered Chef’s garlic press has a cleaning tool that attaches to the press so they don’t become separated during storage.” Even his hobbies are related. Albert loves anything outdoors - the wilder the better. Kayaking, fishing, hunting, competitive sailing, cycling, nature photography… anything that takes you “out”. Success in these activities, Albert says, requires careful observation of non-human cues - again, the study of interfaces.
Asked what drew him to Velentium, Albert mentioned that he has known co-founder Tim Carroll for a long time, having met through a mutual colleague and finding they both enjoy hunting and fishing. From a technical and human-impact perspective, however, Albert says that Velentium “just made sense.” Software is everywhere, helping run everything, but he never wanted to use his skill set in the service of anything that could potentially cause harm. Velentium’s passion to change lives for a better world, especially through medical devices, is a natural fit.
Albert also points to Velentium’s ethos on the natural the ebb and flow of work and life. “Push hard, do the job right - and then relax and recharge, be with family, before the next hard push. And when we’re working, we do the job right because it’s the right thing to do. Not because a cop or a regulator or an auditor could be looking over our shoulders.”
“I want everyone to be able to take advantage of my experiences and grow from them,” Albert says. “I’m a big believer in professional mentoring. I’m not ‘Velentium’s Human Factors Engineer.’ My job is ensuring that everybody does HFE. My role is ensuring our focus stays on usability from proposal to final milestone, and that we design the best, simplest interfaces possible to serve our clients and their users.”
Albert is married and has two children in college - Gabriella, a senior exploring options in graduate studies, and Matt, a sophomore working to pin down his major. Both are musically inclined and working at the professional level: Gabriella is pursuing a position with film soundtrack symphonies, while Matt manufactures and sells beats to recording artists and studios.
Chris Jensen is the VP of Corporate Development at Velentium. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Houston and an MBA from Rice University, and has four decades of experience in engineering and small business entrepreneurship. After cutting his teeth in engineering with companies like Sperry-Sun and Halliburton, Chris earned his MBA in finance and spent a few years working in the financial sector before returning to engineering to found his own consultancy. His solo projects reflected his wide-ranging interests, from quantum-based random number generation, to near-earth orbital monitoring systems capable of surviving rocket disasters, to residential construction energy efficiency and regulatory compliance, to custom commercial IT infrastructure installation solutions.
Chris joined Velentium in 2016, and credits the three values (Honorable, Results++, and Humble Charisma) for drawing him in. “When I was interviewed,” he recalls, “Dan and Tim led with the values. They clearly try to live them out personally as well as make a better society through medical device innovation. I turned down a higher-salaried competing offer because Velentium held the promise of a better work environment and better work goals. I’ve been pleased to see that promise being pursued and fulfilled in the years since.”
As for the work itself, Chris says “I love it. Engineering is engineering, but the fundamental reason for our work is to make peoples’ lives better. My first project here was an implant that senses the onset of epileptic fits, delivers a therapeutic signal to counter them, and alerts caregivers. That project let me see our clients’ passion for their devices, and their mission to improve patients’ lives, which matches our own.” Since then, Chris recalls, “There have been so many more projects that do similar, magical, sci-fi level tech treating people’s medical conditions. We’re fortunate to be directly involved in projects that were unimaginable a few years ago. We’re reading brainwaves to improve memory, restoring paralytic nerve function to let people walk again, and providing treatments for chronic pain, to name just a few.”
Another big attractor Chris points to is Velentium’s hiring practices. “Top minds work here,” he observed, adding that Velentium has capabilities matched by few other companies in the world. “We’ve grown not merely by doing more of the same - design and development - but by continuing to go deeper and explore other types of services, including testing and production of medical implantables, as well as adjacent services like regulatory advising, clinical trials, and venture capital networking to enable more medical devices manufacturers to succeed.”
“We win deals because our values are real, and have a material impact on how we do business. So much of our work is ongoing, repeat, and referral business because we don’t squeeze our clients. We treat them right and go above and beyond, doing what the project needs, not necessarily only what we contracted for. We find ways of making it work because we share our clients’ passion to change lives for a better world.”
Chris and his wife have a son in 5th grade who has special needs. “We’ve learned so much from him,” Chris says. “He’s a unique and caring individual who has taught me so much about what’s important in a human life - for example, the value of persistence and self-advocacy. You can get almost anything if you ask for it enough, and he’s the most persistent person I’ve ever met. He’s also opened our horizons on communication. Translating thoughts and inner experiences into words is a challenge for him, but that doesn’t prevent him from communicating - it’s broader than just speech.”
Christopher Gates is the Director of Product Security at Velentium. He has over 30 years of experience developing and securing medical devices for numerous industry-leading device manufacturers, and frequently collaborates with regulatory and standard bodies including the NTIA, MITRE, Bluetooth SIG, IEEE, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the FDA to present, define, and codify tools, techniques, and processes that enable the creation of secure medical devices.
Christopher has a wife, two sons, one daughter, four grandchildren, and a Siberian Husky. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking, biking, and craft beer, preferably in the company of his wife and their loyal companion.
Everywhere he goes, Christopher promotes the secure development lifecycle, an approach that eases the burden on developers and ensures high-quality products that work as intended to save and improve lives without putting users at risk. In 2020, he co-authored the definitive book on the subject, Medical Device Cybersecurity for Engineers and Manufacturers (Artech House, Aug. 31, 2020. ISBN: 9781630818159).
Christopher graduated from California State University Northridge with a B.S. in Computer Science and worked in various roles as a software engineer, project manager, and cybersecurity architect. His projects ranged from control systems for an early all-electric motorcycle, to consulting for Disneyland, to engineering and securing medical devices targeting respiratory, cardiovascular, and endocrine indications.
Christopher joined Velentium in 2017 because he had previously collaborated with the company as a contractor and seen firsthand that its values are exemplified by its founders. “In a world where most companies are only motivated by financial interest, Velentium routinely has moral discussions about the best approach for its clients, its staff, and the world. Every employee engages each project with the mindset that the equipment we’re designing might one day be used to save our own loved ones.”
For Christopher, this motivation is not a mere thought exercise. When his first grandchild was born prematurely, before his lungs could fully close, Christopher visited him in the NICU. There, he noticed that a handful of the machines allowing his grandson to breathe were among the devices he himself had helped design.
"Velentium employees are not 'workers for hire,' they are 'workers for cause.'"
John McKnight serves as Velentium’s Director of Firmware. He has over 30 years of development experience in multiple industries, the latest and most fulfilling being in the medical device industry. He has expertise in firmware, software, and hardware development, writing code, machine learning, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, and blockchain development. John has also worked in structural engineering analysis for both residential and commercial buildings (he built a 3D renderer to view the buildings he was designing), and risk analysis for the financial sector (generating programs to determine loan eligibility). He even built a voice assistant that predates Siri and Alexa. His name is on a few patents, too.
John has been fascinated with computers since he was 10 years old and knew he wanted to work with them for his future career. As a high schooler, John was always writing code even though “there was no particular reason to do so.” One of his high school teachers knew a company looking for a developer and recommended John to them, which is where he landed his first job. He is entirely self-taught, knows that his mind can “go any direction he wants it to go,” and says he stays motivated because it’s his goal to “learn one new thing every day.”
In the 80s, John was a "maker" long before the term became common. He designed single board computers, wrote the firmware for them, designed and coded a graphical OS, and made audio and video capture devices as well as network cards. In 1983, he was recording music to computers and storing them in a data format he'd devised while also writing noise-canceling algorithms so they would play well using extremely limited hardware.
Looking back at his career, he’s glad for the opportunities he’s had to work on such a wide variety of projects, but he realized those things weren’t making a true difference in people’s lives. While feeling dissatisfied where he was, he met Mike Honaker, who suggested John apply for the open developer job at Velentium. After talking with Mark Kraft, Kenny Long, and Albert Rodriguez, John knew there was something special about Velentium’s people and company culture. He was impressed by everyone’s high caliber, their humble charisma and respect for each other, and their passion for what they do. When John learned about the various devices that Velentium worked on, he was sold. This was definitely the next right step.
John’s goal for Velentium is to continue changing lives for a better world. He desires to help establish the groundwork for continued growth through mentoring and teambuilding, and through building systems and processes that will ensure future success. “The values that we strive to live by separate Velentium from its competitors. Sometimes success is measured in the wrong ways, but Velentium chooses to define success by adhering to its core values, which govern who it hires and how it operates.” In the future, John would love to see higher adoption of machine learning and integrate that into implantable devices. The technology is getting close to being able to do that, and the use cases could be extraordinary.
John lives on a farm east of Nashville, Tennessee, where he grows and cans organic vegetables, raises chickens for their eggs, makes his own cheeses and soaps, tends to a vineyard, and will be raising cattle soon too. He is completely off the grid apart from internet access; everything else runs on solar energy. In John’s spare time, he enjoys music (he plays guitar and has a rapidly-expanding collection of guitars), motocross (he used to race and plans to resume), playing disc golf, and riding his tractor to relax.
Satyajit “Sat” Ketkar is the Director of Systems Engineering at Velentium. His 20-year career includes electrical, firmware, software, and systems engineering experience, including seven in medical device design and two with a European Union notified body conducting medical device reviews and audits for safety, quality, performance, and security.
While still a student at the University of Houston, Sat helped start the IEEE robotics club and worked with a team developing a real-time robotics operating system for fully autonomous robots that could learn in order to complete challenging tasks. He was part of the original development team behind Wordpress (before it was called Wordpress), and owned and managed two commercial podcasts - one focused on sports, another on culture and current events - which he later sold before plunging into medical development full-time.
Sat is married to a biomedical engineer who works for TUV as a reviewer and auditor. They are avid readers and strategy board game players who agree about supporting the Astros and the U of H. Cougars, but don’t see eye-to-eye on football: He roots for the Packers, she for the Eagles. They have two children who both enjoy art. Their daughter (8) has a talent for math and music, while their son (6) loves all things Star Wars, dinosaurs, and being loud.
Sat explains that corporate culture is both what attracted him to Velentium and what forms the basis of Velentium’s competitive advantage. “Honesty and transparency are part of being Honorable,” he said. “We do right not because it’s a ‘rule’ written on a piece of paper. We do it because that’s who we are. We go above and beyond. Internally, our culture reinforces your desire not to let your team down.”
As a Technical Director, Sat’s personal goals for the company include fostering our existing culture through mentoring so that the Velentium ethos survives its founders. He loves working on medical devices because he knows from past experiences that this field saves and improves people’s lives: “Maybe someone I know. Maybe me. Nowhere else do you get to do work that will keep someone alive and restore their quality of life.”
Terry Daglow serves as Velentium’s VP of Advanced Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering. He is well-recognized amongst industry peers as an experienced corporate director and brilliant engineer with thirty plus years invested in the implantable medical device industry. A visionary entrepreneur with diverse inventive and business interests, his passion for R&D fuels him in perpetually seeking broader exposure to multiple disciplines. He is an accomplished inventor with notable expertise in mechanical engineering; his personal design portfolio includes multiple products for current industry leaders as well as several independent inventions. He presently holds fifty-five US patents, with a further fifty-one patents pending.
When Tim Carroll first came to Terry and said, “I need your help,” Terry instead offered to interview someone else on behalf of Tim. But Tim was insistent, and Terry eventually joined full-time because of Tim’s tenacity and his vision for the company. It’s something Terry wants to support and can get behind because “once you see a device you created helping someone in real life, it’s addictive. I have to create.” He joined Velentium to pursue his life-long interests in improving the quality of life for patients by increasing awareness and accessibility to superior technologies at cost-effective price points. He brings his relentless talent for initiating and sustaining a truly collaborative environment that respects individuality while also inspiring creativity and participation. Terry aspires to push past established limitations and collaboratively create the best possible solution to any given challenge.
Terry began his corporate career at Medtronic, followed by Intermedics Inc., Sulzermedica, ANS, and St. Jude Medical before pursuing independent interests and professional consulting. Terry’s expertise and ingenuity have been applied to a broad range of disciplines and product lines including cardiac rhythm management (pacemakers/defibrillators and peripherals), pain and spasticity (drug pumps), neuromodulation (spinal cord stimulation, deep brain stimulation and peripheral nerve stimulation), hearing loss (implantable hearing device), CMF and orthopedics (single-use surgical tools). Terry graduated with a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Terry has been married for almost 30 years and has children and a granddaughter who is the center of his universe. He enjoys teaching his granddaughter how to swim (“she’s doing great!”), traveling (especially hanging out on beaches with a fruity rum drink), going to the rodeo, hunting with his son, and inventing things. Terry believes that “Velentium’s culture makes us readily accessible to customers. We talk to our customers all the time and work collaboratively on projects. Our accessibility is a market differentiator and helps ensure the success of our projects and our ability to retain clients for years.”
“For me, Velentium is a place to do what I do best. I wouldn’t want to do anything else besides medical device invention and engineering—I can’t do anything else. So my personal definition of success is finding a place like Velentium to do it. At the end of the day, success means creating value in the world. It’s who I am.”
