ArborMetrix Appoints Brett Furst as CEO: ArborMetrix Inc., an Ann Arbor-based health care analytics and software company specializing in the measurement of hospital and specialty-based care, today announced the appointment of Brett Furst as CEO. Furst brings more than 22 years of experience in facilitating collaboration through data exchanges and large-scale software solutions in the healthcare, manufacturing and consumer packaged goods industries. Most recently, Furst served as vice president of healthcare at Covisint, a division of Compuware. Under his leadership, Covisint Healthcare became one of the nation’s largest and fastest growing cloud-based health information exchange providers. In 2011, ArborMetrix received initial funding from Arboretum Ventures, an investment led by Managing Director Paul McCreadie, who currently serves as ArborMetrix’s chairman of the board. Founded in 2001, Arboretum Ventures is an early stage venture capital firm specializing in the healthcare sector. The firm is headquartered in Ann Arbor and currently manages $235 million with an aim to transform young companies into thriving businesses that improve patient outcomes and lower the cost of care. ArborMetrix focuses on developing rigorous data analysis and actionable business intelligence solutions, which deliver cost and quality performance metrics for hospitals, hospital systems, health plans and professional associations. For more information, visit www.arbormetrix.com, email info@arbormetrix.com or call (734) 661-2562.
Wayne State College of Engineering Gets Three New Department Chairs: The Wayne State University College of Engineering Thursday announced the appointment of three new department chairs: Xue-wen Chen as chair of the Department of Computer Science; Juri Gelovani as chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering; and Joseph Hummer as chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Chen most recently served on the electrical engineering and computer science faculty at the University of Kansas. Since 2008 he also served as director of the Bioinformatics and Computational Life Science Laboratory at the Information and Technology Center. A 2007 NSF CAREER award recipient, Chen’s research interests include bioinformatics, systems biology, health care informatics, machine learning and data mining. He has published more than 100 refereed papers including 50 journal articles, and has given keynote talks at a number of international conferences. Chen is current chair of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society Technical Committee on Computational Life Sciences, co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Data Mining and Bioinformatics and a senior member of IEEE. He is also an editorial board member of IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine and the International Journal of Functional Informatics and Personalized Medicine. He earned his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University (2001). He continued his postdoctoral research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at California State University in 2002. Gelovani comes to Wayne State from the University of Texas’ M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where he was a full professor and chairman of the Department of Experimental Diagnostic Imaging and director of the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging Research. He also has served on committees for science faculty, small animal cancer imaging research, on the faculty of the Brain Tumor Center, and with the Stem Cell Multidisciplinary Research Program. Gelovani is the pioneer of molecular-genetic in vivo imaging. His research interests include molecular PET imaging of cancer and the central nervous system using newly developed radiotracers, genomics and proteomics for cancer therapy, adoptive immunotherapy and regenerative stem cell therapies. He holds more than 15 patents, has published more than 160 papers and book chapters, and edited a major book in molecular imaging in oncology. Gelovani received the International Fellow Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the George and Barbara Bush Endowment for Innovative Cancer Research, and the Gold Medal for significant contributions to the field of molecular imaging from the Society for Molecular Imaging (SMI). Gelovani was president of the SMI and the Academy of Molecular Imaging, for which he received service awards. Currently, Gelovani is president of the World Molecular Imaging Society. He is a member of several grant review study sections at the National Institutes of Health, an associate editor of Molecular Imaging and Biology, and one of the academic editors of PLOS One. Gelovani was recognized for spearheading the development of a triage center in Hoboken, N.J., and leading the emergency medical team for decontamination and treatment of the most severely injured victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Gelovani earned both his M.D. (1986) and Ph.D. (1990) in neurosurgery from the University of Tartu in Estonia. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City (1991-1996). Hummer most recently was a professor in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University, where he researched and taught traffic operations, highway design and highway safety for the past 20 years. Hummer has published more than 80 journal articles from more than 50 funded research projects. His research has resulted in the appearance of new material in the Highway Capacity Manual (a core reference in the field) and federal government approvals of fluorescent warning signs at pedestrian walkways. He is an international leader in the development and testing of unconventional intersection and interchange designs. Hummer was elected a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 2008. He has been chair of the Institute of Transportation Engineers Educator’s Council and an editor for the ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering. He is currently on the Journal of Transportation Safety and Security editorial board. He earned his B.S. and M.S. in civil engineering from Michigan State University (1983 and 1985, respectively) and his Ph.D. from Purdue University (1989). Hummer is a native of the Detroit area and a graduate of Eisenhower High School in Utica.
