Dr. A.K. Pradeep, President and Chief Executive Officer

Before founding NeuroFocus, Dr. Pradeep was the Founder and Managing Partner of Meridian Consulting, LLC a privately held California company specializing in governance consulting, and customizing and applying GE best practices to multiple industry sectors. He is also the founder of BoardVantage, a company founded in 2000 providing web based corporate governance platform for corporate boards of directors.

Dr. Pradeep serves as Chairman of the Board of Wilderness Press and as Chairman of Vigiliant Privacy Corporation. He holds a PhD in Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.

Dr. Robert T. Knight M.D., Chief Science Advisor

Dr. Knight is the Evan Rauch Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at UC Berkeley.

He joined the Psychology Department at UC Berkeley in 1998 to develop a program in human neuroscience. After completion of a Neurology residency at the University of California at San Diego, he did post-doctoral training at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in the area of human neurophysiology. Prior to moving to Berkeley he was a faculty member in the Department of Neurology at the University of California at Davis. During this period he received the Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for distinguished contributions to Neurological research. Dr. Knight received his BS in Physics from the Illinois Institute of Technology and his MD from Northwestern University Medical School. He is an internationally acknowledged expert in the neurophysiological analysis of cognitive and emotional processing in humans.

Caroline Winnett, Chief Marketing Officer

Caroline Winnett received her MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. She went on to found Albany Associates, providing marketing services to corporate clients. Subsequently she was Publisher of Wilderness Press and Chief Marketing Officer for BoardVantage. She sits on the boards of three California corporations and is the co-author of "Corporate Governance: Five Easy Pieces."

Ratnakar Dev, EVP Knowledge and Information Services

Prior to joining Neurofocus, Dev was Systems Architect of Lawson Healthcare Vertical, responsible for technical direction of the Mobile Software Suite of products. Before that, as Chief Architect, Dev led the design and development effort of an innovative plaform based suite of products for Apexion Technologies, a mobile healthcare startup company acquired by Lawson Software. Previously, at Buzzsaw.com, an Autodesk startup and Autodesk Inc, Dev, held Senior Engineering positions developing several key internet technologies for the CAD industry. Dev spent several years as a Systems Analyst with Fujitsu-ICIM Ltd. working with International clients in UK and Australia. Dev holds a Computer Engineering Degree (B.E. Computer Engineering) from University of Pune, India.

Jack Lester, Chief Financial Officer

Jack joins the company from his previous post as Chief Financial Officer for Vodafone Americas, Inc., the U.S. arm of the multinational cellular phone company. In that capacity, he was responsible for financial planning and analysis, accounting, financial reporting, cash management, investment management and risk management. In addition, he had financial governance oversight and reporting responsibilities for Vodafone investments in the Americas Asia Region including Verizon Wireless, Japan, Mexico, China, India and Korea.

Jack is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley. He earned an MBA from the University of Southern California.

Jeff Bander, Senior EVP Client Services

Prior to joining NeuroFocus, Jeff served as Executive Vice President of Sales for the Hollywood Media Corporation based in New York. In that capacity, he increased sales and expanded the firm’s client base dramatically by creating new products and revenue streams. Similarly, in his earlier role as Senior Vice President of Sales for WorldNow, he built a national sales network of 132 teams and multiplied the company’s annual revenue from $600,000 to $18 million in one year. He has also worked as a senior sales executive for Cox Interactive and the BellSouth Advertising & Publishing Corporation.

Jeff earned his undergraduate and Masters degrees in Advertising from the University of Georgia.

Dr. Ram Gurumoorthy, Chief Science and Technology Officer

Dr. Ram is a Silicon Valley Technology icon. He directs all of the analysis, product development, and research at NeuroFocus. He heads up a global team of signal processing experts, algorithm developers, and product engineers.

Prior to joining NeuroFocus, he was the Chief Technology Officer of Vigilant Privacy Corporation. At Vigilant, Dr. Ram was responsible for the product innovation, product development and product management of the industry leading file level enterprise security solution. His string of high-tech successes include: co-founding PersonalDisc, where he pioneered industry leading technologies for the secure digital multi-media revolution; BoardVantage, which to this day offers the most secure corporate governance platform to the elitest of clients - corporate board of directors.

Dr. Ram holds a PhD in Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.

Rajiv Lal
Stanley Roth, Sr. Professor of Retailing
Harvard Business School

Rajiv Lal, is the Stanley Roth, Sr. Professor of Retailing at Harvard Business School where he is the course head for the required course in Marketing in the first year of the MBA program and also teaches in several Executive Education programs including the Top Management Seminar for Retailers and Suppliers.

Mr. Lal was Professor at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University since 1982. He was the Thomas Henry Carroll Ford Foundation Visting Professor at Harvard Business School for 1997-98. He was visiting Professor of Marketing at INSEAD, France in 1986, 1988, 1992 and 1993. He did his undergraduate work in mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, India, and received his PhD in Industrial Administration from Carnegie-Mellon University. Lal is an Area Editor for Marketing Science.

Mr. Lal's current research is concerned with the dramatic changes affecting retailing. His most recent work in this area studies the impact of using the Internet as a channel of distribution on a retailer's pricing, merchandising and branding strategy. The paper was published in Marketing Science and nominated for the award of the best paper in Marketing and Management Science. His earlier work in retailing studies the impact of competition between different retail formats, such as EDLP and Hi-Lo grocers. He has also studied the consequences of the increasing use of store brands by grocery retailers on store loyalty and its implications for packaged goods manufacturers.

Ravi Parmeswar
Managing Director – Global Consumer & Marketplace Insights & Client Advocacy, Citi

Ravi Parmeswar is head of Citi Global Consumer & Marketplace Insights and Global Client Advocacy, working with Citi’s business units throughout the world to build best-in-class products, service and marketing.

Mr. Parmeswar joined Citi in September ’07, bringing with him over twenty years of experience in the fields of Consumer Insights, Market Research, Strategic Planning, Product Development and Consulting. Prior to joining Citi, Ravi was with Coca-Cola Consumer Insights in a variety of positions in Latin America and North America, including Vice President, Knowledge & Insights where he led Coca-Cola’s insights department worldwide.

He was previously Director of Global Research at Campbell Soup, prior to which he was at Kraft General Foods.

In addition, Mr. Parmeswar has published numerous papers and delivered speeches on a wide range of topics, including marketing, R&D, and strategy development.

Ravi has an MBA from Temple University and an MS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Kansas.

Barry Herstein
General Manager of North America & Chief Marketing Officer
PayPal
 
Barry Herstein is the General Manager North America & Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for PayPal Inc., where he is responsible both for PayPal's North America business unit and for PayPal's global brand and marketing strategy.

Before joining PayPal, Mr. Herstein was the CMO for American Express International's consumer business. In that role, he led development and implementation of integrated consumer marketing strategies designed to grow American Express consumer payments business outside of the U.S.

Prior to joining American Express, Mr. Herstein was the CMO at the Financial Times (FT) Group, where he oversaw marketing initiatives for all FT businesses: publishing, Internet and business information. Previous to the FT, Herstein was managing director of consumer marketing for Citibank's international consumer business. He began his career at Avon Products Inc., where he achieved the level of group vice president of marketing for the U.S. business.

Mr. Herstein received a Bachelor's degree in finance and marketing from Boston University School of Management and a Masters in Business Administration from the London Business School. He is a member of the London Business School International Alumni Board and a director emeritus of the Jose Limon Dance Foundation.

Dr. Mark D'Esposito, MD
Director, Brain Imaging Center
University of California, Berkeley

Dr. D'Esposito was elected Chairman of the Organization of Human Brain Mapping and President of the Society for Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology. He is also a Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the UC Berkeley Brain Imaging Center which utilizes functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) and EEG to study human cognition. Professor D'Esposito earned his medical degree in 1987 at the SUNY Health Science Center at Syracuse and completed his Neurological training at Boston University Medical Center in 1991. In 1993, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, where he was also the Chief of the Cognitive Neurology Division. In 2000, he joined the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley to become the inaugural Director of the newly created Henry Wheeler Jr. Brain Imaging Center.

Dr. D’Esposito has received numerous research grants from the National Institutes of Health and private sources such as the Dana Foundation and the American Federation for Aging Research. He received the Norman Geschwind Prize in Behavioral Neurology from American Academy of Neurology for his contributions to research on the neural basis of cognition in humans. He is on the Editorial Board of several neuroscience journals. In 2004 he became the editor of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, the premier journal focused on the neural basis of behavior in humans. Dr. D'Esposito's research focuses on investigating how the brain creates mental experience such as forming memories and making decisions. He is widely acknowledged as in international leader in human brain research.

Dr. D’Esposito’s research focuses on investigating how the brain creates mental experience such as forming memories and paying attention.

Earl K. Miller, Ph.D,
Picower Professor of Neuroscience,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dr. Earl Miller is the Picower Professor of Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Associate Director of MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology and Neuroscience in 1990 from Princeton University.   He has academic appointments in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT.

Professor Miller was quoted extensively in The New Yorker magazine's "Annals of Science" section, article titled: "The Eureka Hunt." Also, Professor Miller's paper on "An Integrative Theory of Prefrontal Cortex Function", which he co-authored with J. D. Cohen, and which was published in "The Annual Review of Neuroscience", was designated a Current Classic by Thomson Scientific. Papersselected for this recognition have the greatest absolute increase in citations during a certain time period.

Dr. Miller is the recipient of numerous awards and honors for his scientific work, including the Mathilde Solowey Award in the Neurosciences (2007), election to the International Neuropsychological Symposium (2006), elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2005), the Picower Chair at MIT (2003), the National Academy of Sciences Troland Research Award (2000), the Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award (2000), the Pew Scholar Award (1996), the John Merck Scholar Award (1996), and the McKnight Scholar Award (1996).   He has delivered numerous lectures worldwide, serves as editor, and on the editorial boards of, major journals in neuroscience, and on international advisory boards.

Dr. Leon Y. Deouell
Chair, Neuropsychology graduate program
Hebrew University, Jerusalem

Dr. Deouell a senior lecturer at the department of psychology and a member of the Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He earned his medical degree summa cum laude at the Sackler School of Medicine at the Tel Aviv University in Israel in 1993 and his PhD in psychology with distinction at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After a post-doctoral fellowship as a Rothschild fellow at the University of California at Berkeley, he joined the faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2003. He is currently the chair of the neuropsychology division at the department of psychology.

Dr. Deouell's research addresses the neural correlates of perception with and without attention, sensory memory, and conscious awareness, using tools such as EEG and functional imaging. In particular his research involves both healthy and brain damaged patients with the aim of understanding the basis of impaired cognition after brain damage as well as the normal function of the brain in behavior.

Stephen Kosslyn, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
Harvard University

Dr. Kosslyn is the John Lindsley Professor of Psychology and former Chair of the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He has published over 300 scientific papers, and is one of the founding fathers of the field of cognitive neuroscience.

Dr. Kosslyn’s academic accomplishments have been recognized through awards bestowed by organizations including the American Psychological Association and the National Academy of Sciences, among many others. He was also granted a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Catell Award.

His achievements in research have focused primarily on the nature of visual perception, visual mental imagery, and visual communication. He has had several books published on these subjects, including “Image and Mind”; “Image and Brain”; “The Case for Mental Imagery”; “Graph Design for the Eye and Mind”; and “Clear and to the Point”.

Dr. Kosslyn received his B. A. in psychology from UCLA, and his Ph.D. from Stanford University, also in psychology.

Gerald Zaltman, Ph.D.
Professor of Business Administration Emeritus
Harvard Business School

Dr. Zaltman is the Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Business Administration Emeritus at the Harvard Business School. He served as a member of the University’s Mind, Brain, and Behavior Interfaculty Initiative; and was also Co-Director of The Mind of the Market Laboratory at the Business School. He is a founding partner of Olson Zaltman Associates.

In addition to his academic career, which has been highlighted by numerous awards and other honors from leading industry organizations such as the American Marketing Association, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Advertising Research Foundation, Dr. Zaltman has also published several books on the subjects of marketing and consumer research. They include “How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market”, which ranked among the top five best-selling business books in North America and Europe; and his latest work, “Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal about the Minds of Consumers”.

Dr. Zaltman’s knowledge and insights have been written about in The New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, Time, Fast Company and a number of other top periodicals. He is a past President of the Association for Consumer Research.

Dr. Hans-Jochen Heinze
Director of the Leibniz Institute of Neurobiology Magdeburg, Department for Behavioral Neurology
Magdeburg, Germany

Dr. Heinz’s distinguished career has incorporated leadership posts at some of Germany’s, and the world’s, most acclaimed neuroscientific institutions. In addition to his current role as a director of the Leibniz Insititute, these include the Max Planck Institute, Otto von Guericke University, the Center for Neuroscience at University Bremen, and several others of similar stature in the global scientific community.

His professional achievements have been recognized by appointments to the Senate of the German Research Foundation and the Advisory Boards of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the International University Bremen, plus many more scientific organizations. Dr. Heinze is a member of the German Academy of Natural Scientists LEOPOLDINA, and he has been awarded top prizes for his work by Duke University, Otto von Guericke University, as well as receiving the Quadrennial Prize DUBOIS-DEBAUQUE for Electrophysiology.

Dr. Heinze earned his M.D. from the Medical School Hanover. Some of his wide-ranging research activities have included the neural mechanisms of cognition, memory and language, and cortical organization, brain plasticity, and hemispherical specialization, among a host of others.

Anna Christina Nobre, Ph.D.
Director of Brain & Cognition Laboratory and the Centre for Real-Time Brain Imaging
University of Oxford

Dr. Nobre directs the Brain & Cognition Laboratory and the Centre for Real-Time Brain Imaging at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England. At the University of Oxford, she holds the posts of University Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Experimental Psychology and of Tutorial Fellow of Psychology at New College. She also holds an Adjunct Professor position at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

At the Brain & Cognition Laboratory, Dr. Nobre oversees research studies involving a variety of leading brain-imaging methodologies including fMRI, MEG, EEG, and TMS. These neuroscience methods are combined with behavorial studies to reveal the neural systems supporting cognitive functions in the human brain.

Much of the Lab’s activity is devoted to understanding how the brain generates moment-to-moment predictions about events to unfold in order to optimize perception and action. Other research topics include the representation of time; the influence of motivation over perception; and how social factors color experience.

Dr. Nobre received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1992, where she focused on intracranial as well as non-invasive electrophysiological studies of human cognition. During her postdoctoral research at Yale, and then at Harvard from 1992 to 1994, she was involved in some of the first brain-imaging studies of cognitive functions in the human brain. In 1994 she moved to Oxford as a McDonnell-Pew Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience and a Junior Research Fellow at New College. In 1996 she took up a position as University Lecturer in the Department of Experimental Psychology, where she was subsequently promoted to Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience.

Adam Gazzaley, MD, Ph.D.
Director of the Neuroscience Imaging Center
University of California, San Francisco

Dr. Adam Gazzaley is currently director of the Neuroscience Imaging Center at the University of California, San Francisco, a faculty member in the Neurology, Physiology and Psychiatry departments, and principal investigator of a neuroscience laboratory that conducts research on the neural mechanisms of attention and memory. A major focus of his research has been to expand our understanding of the alterations in the aging brain that lead to cognitive decline. His most recent studies explore how we can improve attention and memory abilities in older adults.

He has authored over 40 scientific articles and his research has been profiled in major media outlets such the Wall Street Journal, TIME magazine, Discover, PBS, NPR, NBC Nightly News, and The Today Show. Awards and honors he has received for his research include the Pfizer/AFAR Innovations in Aging Award and the Ellison Foundation New Scholar Award in Aging.

He obtained an M.D. and a Ph.D. degree in Neuroscience at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.