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Meet the Leadership Team

Senior Leadership Council

TThe APT Senior Leadership Council serves as the primary decision-making body for the Center. Its members consist of the Executive and Co-Director, Deputy Director, Associate Directors for Medical Affairs, Translation & Corporate Relations, Capacity Building & Career Development and Engineering and Quality. The group convenes monthly to set strategic goals, evaluate Center effectiveness, define new or redefine existing Center programs, and allocate Center resources to advance our mission to discover, develop, deploy and disseminate new interventions to improve the health, wellbeing and daily function of disabled Veterans.

Ron Triolo

Ronald Triolo, PhD
Executive Director

Ronald J. Triolo, Ph.D. serves as the Executive Director of the APT Center, a research center in the VA Rehabilitation R&D Service. He is a Tenured Full Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center, which is a state-of-the-art facility for the biomechanical and physiological analysis of human motion and rehabilitation outcomes and assistive technologies for gait, posture, balance, and activities of daily living after neuromuscular dysfunction.
Gilles Pinault

Gilles Pinault, PhD
M.D. Co-Director

Gilles Pinault, M.D. is responsible for identifying the medical and rehabilitation needs of veterans and communicating them to the investigators and Center leadership. He actively solicits input from peers within the LSCVAMC and CWRU medical communities, as well as the local and national professional consumers of technology. He is specifically charged with maintaining strong and productive linkages with all investigators, clinicians and medical consultants, and medical students. Dr. Pinault is the Medical Director of the Surgical ICU and has over 15 years of full-time service at the LSCVAMC as a vascular surgeon. He has served as Co-Investigator or Investigator on NIH, DoD, and VA grants, as well as numerous industrial-sponsored clinical trials.

Margot Damaser

Margot Damaser, PhD
Deputy Director

Margot Damaser, Ph.D. is a Full Staff and Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Cleveland Clinic and a Senior Research Career Scientist at the Cleveland VA Medical Center. She has an international reputation for her high-quality research aimed at improving diagnosis and treatments of pelvic floor disorders, including stress urinary incontinence, pelvic organ prolapse, and fecal incontinence. Her research is focused on applying regeneration of neuromuscular and extracellular matrix to benefit these disorders as well as development of wireless catheter-free monitoring systems. In 2000, Dr. Damaser was awarded a Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering for outstanding research on the human urinary bladder using mathematical modeling along with physiological and neurological studies. This is the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government on young professionals at the outset of their independent research careers.

As the Deputy Director, Dr. Damaser oversees Center reporting & internal/external communications, investigator engagement, orientation & reoccurring Center meetings, innovation incentives & pilot study investments, facilitating seminars, workshops and short courses and coordinates VA APT committee representation.

Steve Majerus, PhD
Associate Director of Engineering & Quality

Steve Majerus, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering at CWRU and Investigator at the VA APT Center. He received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. His research focuses on sensor medicine: using bio-sensors to refine treatment and restore lost function.

As the Associate Director of Engineering & Quality, Dr. Majerus is responsible for trans-project effort leveling & project management, engineering team effectiveness, quality system implementation, maintenance & training, center-wide outreach and support, technical hiring and/or contracting and new technology development or acquisition.
Dr. Jonathan Baskin

Jonathan Baskin, M.D. FACS
Associate Director for Translation & Corporate Affairs

Jonathan Baskin is an Otolaryngologist-Head & Neck Surgeon with additional board certification in Facial Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery and Sleep Medicine. He has been with the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA and Case Western Reserve University for 2 decades, has been caring for veterans for almost 3 decades and served as the Section Chief of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at the Cleveland VA Medical Center 2008-2020.  In addition to the biomedical translational work he does with the APT Center, he is an oversight board member for the Case-Coulter Translational Research Partnership and has academic appointments in the schools of Medicine and Engineering.  His research area of interest is in the domain of peripheral neuromodulation and surgical device development.

Dr. Baskin works closely with investigators to review and assess their projects’ translational readiness and educates investigators & staff on moving biomedical technologies from the lab into the commercial sphere so they can be deployed in the service of patient care.  He also works closely with Technology Transfer Offices at the VA and at CWRU.
Clay Kelly

Clay Kelly, M.D.
Associate Director of Clinical Affairs

Clay Kelly, M.D. clinical area of work is amputee rehabilitation, where he has directed interdisciplinary amputee clinics for the past 25+ years. His goal is to restore and preserve function in amputees, thus collaborating in research initiatives through the APT Center is a natural extension of his work.

As the Director of Medical Affairs, Dr. Kelly provides medical monitoring and regulatory oversight, facilitating interactions with clinical services, ensures research projects have relevance to the VHA mission and clinical priorities, informs the Center of new medical center policies or leadership changes, provides general local and VISN level communication updates, represents rehabilitation & medical priorities to investigators and assist investigators with Identifying clinical collaborators.

Jeffrey Capadona, Ph.D.
Associate Director of Capacity Building & Career Development

Jeffrey Capadona, Ph.D. is the Leonard Case Jr. Professor of Engineering and the Associate Chair of Graduate in the Department of Engineering at CWRU and Research Career Scientist at the Cleveland VA Medical Center. His research interest is in the neurodegenerative response to implanted biomedical devices. Dr. Capadona’s awards include: the Case School of Engineering Faculty Research Award, multiple graduate student mentoring awards, and the 2011 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).

As the Associate Director for Capacity Building & Career Development, Dr. Capadona is responsible for core infrastructure updates & unallocated fund requests, undergraduate (Ko Scholar & Co-op), graduate, & medical student programs, APTC Fellows & Scholars programs, internal grant reviews & guiding young investigators on grantsmanship and identifying & mentoring CDA, RCS or other career award applicants.


Leadership Council

The APT Leadership Council consists of the Senior Leadership Council plus additional highly engaged Investigators of the Center. This larger group meets monthly to bring and discuss emerging opportunities and issues affecting investigators and research programs. In addition, the group provides additional insight into key decision making affecting the APT Center.

Members

Kath Bogie, DPhil
Hamid Charkhkar, PhD
Janet Gbur, PhD
Allison Hess-Dunning, PhD
Lisa Lombardo, MPT		 Pedram Mohseni, PhD
Doug Shire, PhD
Andrew Shoffstall, PhD
Mark Walker, MD
Chris Zorman, PhD
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