Raymond Cohen first started making headlines in the Business Journal in the late 1990s, after he took the reins at local cardiac defibrillator maker Cardiac Science Corp., which soon became among the fastest-growing medical device in the U.S. He earned an Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award from the Business Journal in 2002.
The exec, just named our Businessperson of the Year in the healthcare sector for his work at $3.2B-valued urologic device maker Axonics (Nasdaq: AXNX), still has ties to the heart industry.
In late December, he was appointed chairman of the board for BiVacor, a clinical-stage medical technology company developing what it calls “a total artificial heart.” Its technology incorporates magnetic levitation, the same principle used in some high-speed trains.
BiVacor, which has operations in Huntington Beach, last year raised $18M in a Series B round.
The FDA last year approved plans for the company to conduct a first in-human clinical feasibility of its product, as “a bridge to heart transplant in the treatment of subjects with biventricular heart failure.” The trial is expected to start in the first half of this year, according to BiVacor.
For more on Cohen, see Peter J. Brennan’s front-page feature.
EAST COAST POSTCARDS:
You could be forgiven for thinking that Palmer Luckey was a Terrapin.
The baggage claim area at Baltimore-Washington International Airport is blanketed with ads from the University of Maryland’s business program, which touts its role in developing entrepreneurs.
Along with brand names like Google, Under Armour, Sirius XM and Beyond Meat, the school highlights Luckey’s first big startup success, Irvine-based VR firm Oculus, as being “founded by Terps.”
The founder of Costa Mesa’s Anduril Industries started Oculus after dropping out of Cal State Long Beach. But a fellow co-founder and original CEO of Oculus, Brendan Iribe, once went to UMD (he also dropped out, as a freshman), and gave $31M to the school a decade ago.
Brendan Iribe also paid a reported $30.9 million in 2014 for a home in the high-end Laguna Beach community of Irvine Cove, after Facebook paid billions for Oculus.
Others with Maryland college ties have paid more for homes in OC, including mortgage exec Glenn Stearns, who paid a reported $50M for a Newport Coast compound in 2020. Stearns is an alum of Towson University, and last year served as the commencement speaker for its College of Business & Economics.
Washington, D.C.’s National Gallery of Art, which counts the largest public repository of works by Mark Rothko, in November began a major new exhibition of the late, great abstract artist’s works, dubbed Paintings on Paper.
The exhibition, which runs through the end of March, counts over 100 works from Rothko, including many “using the artist’s signature format of soft-edged rectangular fields arranged against monochrome backgrounds,” the museum notes. Many are being exhibited for the first time.
The main sponsor for the exhibit in D.C. is Newport Beach’s Lugano Diamonds, whose local backing of the Orange County Museum of Art is responsible for the Costa Mesa museum having free admission since its opening in 2022.
