NTT Research Names Jon Peterson MEI Lab Senior Scientist

Biomedical engineer specialized in cardiovascular systems to support bio digital twin initiative

Sunnyvale, Calif. – February 1, 2021 – NTT Research, Inc., a division of NTT (TYO:9432), today announced that it has named Dr. Jon Nels Peterson a Senior Scientist in its Medical & Health Informatics (MEI) Lab. Dr. Peterson, a biomedical engineer with both academic and medical device industry experience, joined NTT Research in November 2020. He was most recently principal clinical systems engineer at Micro Systems Engineering, Inc., where he was the lead systems engineer for a family of implantable cardiac monitors. He previously held research and engineering positions at Boston Scientific CRM and Creare, Inc., and was a research assistant professor at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. He holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His primary role in the MEI Lab will be to provide technical expertise and leadership in advancing the bio digital twin development strategy.

“We are very pleased to welcome Dr. Peterson as a Senior Scientist on our research team,” said MEI Lab Director, Dr. Hitonobu Tomoike. “A biomedical engineer with a deep understanding of cardiovascular physiology, he has valuable experience in clinical research and in collaborating across medical, engineering and business fields, which will be a tremendous asset in advancing our organizational objectives.”

The MEI Lab’s mission is to apply bioinformatics and data science to medical research. Its bio digital twin initiative aims to create digital replicas of human bodies that physicians can use to simulate various treatments. The goal is to enable optimal and patient-specific therapeutics. In the initial phase of this project, the MEI Lab is developing a cardiovascular bio digital twin (CV BioDT). Dr. Peterson’s background as a research scientist and as a clinical systems engineer, with experience in hardware, firmware and software subsystems, his talent for mathematical modeling and simulation, and his understanding of physiological control systems, as well as pathophysiological states, such as heart failure, all bear directly on the MEI Lab’s agenda.

“I have been privileged to work on problems in basic physiology and clinical medicine, signal processing and data analysis, remote sensing and implantable device design, modeling and simulation. Going forward, I expect to use all of that, and more,” Dr. Peterson said. “My hope is that with the bio digital twin, we can make a real difference in clinical medicine and, most important, in people’s lives.”

In Dr. Peterson’s previous position at Micro Systems Engineering, he was responsible for developing and maintaining system requirements to meet clinical and marketing needs for a family of cardiac monitors and for bringing those products to fruition through collaboration with internal and external stakeholders. At Boston Scientific, he was chief scientist for the development of an implantable pulmonary artery pressure sensor for management of heart failure patients and responsible for algorithm development, with significant input into systems requirements, clinical protocol and regulatory strategy. Among numerous other projects at Creare Inc., Dr. Peterson developed algorithms to classify atrial fibrillation based on electrocardiographic (ECG) and intracardiac signals. As a research assistant professor at the University of Vermont, he conducted basic research into the molecular kinetics and efficiency of healthy and diseased cardiac muscle, designed and constructed an experimental system to measure and control mechanical and biochemical processes in cardiac muscle, and created a finite element model of structural compliances within the muscle to evaluate the effect of internal compliance on muscle performance.

In addition to the bio digital twin initiative, the MEI Lab is also focused on nanosensor technology. In August 2020, NTT Research announced the opening of an office in Munich in support of a joint research agreement with the Technical University of Munich (TUM), which links the MEI Lab with the Neuroelectronics Group within TUM’s School of BioEngineering. The MEI Lab believes that development of the bio digital twin will be informed not only by a vast array of biological, physiological, genomic, phenotypic and health records data, but also by data gleaned from wearable and advanced nanosensor devices.

About NTT Research

NTT Research opened its offices in July 2019 as a new Silicon Valley startup to conduct basic research and advance technologies that promote positive change for humankind. Currently, three labs are housed at NTT Research facilities in Sunnyvale: the Physics and Informatics (PHI) Lab, the Cryptography and Information Security (CIS) Lab, and the Medical and Health Informatics (MEI) Lab. The organization aims to upgrade reality in three areas: 1) quantum information, neuroscience and photonics; 2) cryptographic and information security; and 3) medical and health informatics. NTT Research is part of NTT, a global technology and business solutions provider with an annual R&D budget of $3.6 billion.

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