Management Team

Brian Heaney. Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Heaney is a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur with over 20 years experience in building teams, products and companies. Prior to joining InnerOptic, he spent 5 years as vice president of Engineering for Bytemobile, a leading provider of wireless Internet products. In 1996 Mr. Heaney joined Navio Communications, leading the development of an advanced interactive TV platform. As vice president of Engineering, he participated in the acquisition by Liberate technologies in 1998 and Liberate's subsequent IPO in 2000. Mr. Heaney spent 5 years at Apple Computer as Director of Software for the Power Mac product line. Mr. Heaney began his career at GE Medical, where he performed R&D on medical visualization, graphics acceleration and real-time visual simulation. He holds an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Duke University and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Swarthmore College with bachelor's degrees in Engineering and Economics.

Sharif Razzaque, PhD. Chief Technology Officer. Dr. Razzaque has 15 years experience as a researcher in the area of haptic interfaces, computer graphics, physiological monitoring and medical imaging. Dr. Razzaque is the principal inventor of the InnerOptic patents and principal investigator for InnerOptic's NIH grants. He previously worked at Lockheed Martin and performed cochlear implant research at the University of Michigan. PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for work in virtual environment interfaces.

Kurtis Keller, MS-ISME. Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer. Mr. Keller has previously founded two other technology-based companies, is a member of the board of three technology and biotech-oriented companies and is advisor with Funny Girl VC. Additionally, he has over 15 years of experience at UNC as a researcher in mechanical and optical design. Mr. Keller is one of the principal inventors on the 3D Laparoscope patents. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and an MS in Integrated Manufacturing Systems Engineering from N.C. State University.

Caroline Green, MS-ISME.  Integration, Quality and Regulatory Manager. Ms. Green has extensive experience as a published researcher and NSF grant manager at UNC's world-renowned Computer Science Department.  Since joining InnerOptic in 2004, Ms. Green has secured and managed multiple NIH SBIR grants, managed the successful AIM clinical trial at the Carolinas Medical Center, co-authored multiple research publications, is a co-inventor on multiple patent applications, managed the testing and successful FDA clearance for AIM, InnerOptic's needle guidance product, and led the integration of multiple technologies into InnerOptic's products.

Andrei State, MSCS, Dipl.-Ing. aer. Co-Founder and VP of Stereoscopic Evangelism. As co-founder of InnerOptic and Technical Lead of the UNC medical augmented/virtual reality work over almost 20 years, Mr. State is an expert on stereoscopic displays and has co-invented the novel visualization method at the core of InnerOptic's technology. At UNC, he has led the development of several pioneering AR/VR visualization systems, including the radio-frequency ablation guidance system developed with NIH/NCI support and direct precursor of InnerOptic’s FDA-approved AIM. His expertise also includes image processing and vision-based 3D reconstruction for InnerOptic's stereoscopic and 3D laparoscope technologies, and extends to coordination of human patient, animal and phantom experiments.

Sheila Mikhail, JD, MBA, CPA. Co-Founder and Legal Advisor. Ms. Mikhail has over 15 years of experience in the field of corporate and securities law and management consulting. She has completed over 300 licensing, technology transfer and other intellectual property agreements. She focuses on life science based startups with VC based transactions from $3 million to $600 million. Ms. Mikhail received an MBA in Finance from the University of Chicago and a law degree from Northwestern University.