Michael A Fisher

Michael Fisher has two degrees in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Tech ('93 and '96), 25 years of medical product development experience, and 3 years of teaching experience.  His career spans the fields of tissue engineering, orthopedics, neurosurgery, women’s pelvic health, urology, plastic surgery, and engineering consulting. He was named a “Company Innovator” at Johnson & Johnson and his team won “Revenue Growth Franchise of the Year” at Becton-Dickinson. In 2014, Michael joined Georgia Tech as a director for the Global Center for Medical Innovation (GCMI) – a unique product development consultancy designed to enable translation of academic work into products within the highly regulated medical device space. During his eight years of leadership, GCMI generated over $26MM in revenues, garnered 23 issued US patents, and generated 5 new companies that raised over $100MM in venture investments. In 2022, he joined the Biomedical Engineering Department as a Professor of the Practice and became the director of the Master of Biomedical Innovation and Development (MBID) program in 2023. MBID is a one-year master of science issued by Georgia Tech’s biomedical engineering department that prepares graduates for careers in medical product development.

These career experiences helped Michael to appreciate the process for developing and vetting new medical products and interventions. He also learned about pilot and scale-up manufacturing, green field development of facilities and manufacturing systems, program management, project finances, intellectual properties, and risk mitigation strategies. Some of his best work was performed while helping Georgia Tech faculty translate their research into clinical devices. He has lived around the world in highly diverse environments and learned the value of local and distributed teams.

Mike developed and launched products worth over $1billion in revenues while leading six successful 510(k) applications. He is also a named inventor on over 75 US patents.

Outside of Georgia Tech, Mike sits on several advisory boards for Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering. He has two sons and lives in Grayson, GA. For hobbies, he likes to turn perfectly good wood into sawdust in his wood shop while maintaining his fleet of family cars.