Management and Technology Team 

Helmut Eckhardt, Ph.D. (President and CEO)

Dr. Eckhardt has over 20 years of experience in R&D, New Business Development and General Management for large global companies as well as start-ups in the US and Europe, guiding new technologies and products through all phases of commercial development on a global scale.  He joined Premitec from Becton Dickinson Technologies where he led the technical effort in advanced drug delivery, medical devices including next generation glucose sensing and biomaterials for the company. While at Hoechst (now Aventis) and AlliedSignal (now Honeywell) he held various leadership positions in R&D and general management and led several technology-based corporate ventures and start-up companies.  Dr. Eckhardt is the holder of 19 US patents and author of more than 100 publications in scientific journals and books. 

Jerry J. Cuomo, PhD (Co-Founder and Chairman of Scientific Advisory Board)

Dr. Cuomo is a Distinguished Research Professor at North Carolina State University. He was the 1995 recipient of the National Medal of Technology presented by the President of the United States during ceremonies at the White House. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and holds 115 patents from his 30 years at IBM as a researcher and senior manager at the T.J. Watson Research Center, New York. Dr. Cuomo is internationally recognized for his work in developing novel materials and processes. He has recently been involved in initiating three start-up companies. He has extensive experience in thin film vacuum deposition technology including diamond-like-carbon (DLC) and amorphous diamond. He is the Principal Investigator of the Center for Advanced Manufacturing Processes and Materials (CAMP-M) at NC State.

 H. Troy Nagle, PhD, MD (CoFounder and Chairman of the Board)

Dr. Nagle is the Founding Chair and Professor at the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University at Raleigh.  Dr. Nagle is widely published in medical instrumentation and sensors, including textbooks in digital logic design and sampled-data-control systems. He holds a PhD in electrical and computer engineering and earned an MD degree to focus his engineering expertise on medical device development.  Prof. Nagle has a distinguished service record with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, serving on the EBMS AdCom in the late 1980, as IEEE President in 1994, and four years as Chair of the IEEE Medal of Honor Selection Committee.  In 2003, he became Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Sensors Journal.  He is a Fellow of the IEEE and AIMBE, and a registered professional engineer.

  Stefan Ufer, MSc (Co-Founder and Director Product Development)

Mr. Ufer is a PhD Candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializing in electrochemical processes.  He has 15 years of research and development experience in microsensor systems and holds a master’s degree in analytical chemistry from the University of Münster in Germany. His research interests there included chemical micro-sensors based on Ion Sensitive Field Effect Transistors (ISFETs).  His PhD dissertation at UNC-CH is focusing on planar microelectrodes for potentiometric and amperometric biosensors fabricated on flexible substrate materials. He is an expert in microfabrication of unique structures using thin and thick film technologies commonly employed in VLSI processing.  He has made significant contributions to the intellectual property portfolio of Premitec.

Vinay G. Sakhrani, MSc (Co_Founder)

Mr. Sakhrani has a master’s degree in material science and engineering from North Carolina State University. He served as the first President of Premitec, Inc. During his graduate studies he conducted research in polymer materials, plasma science and plasma-assisted chemical vapor deposition of thin coatings.