Alumni Spotlight: Leo Petrossian
Before becoming CEO of multiple biomedical start-ups, Leo Petrossian started his engineering career getting a dual bachelor’s in Biomedical and Electrical Engineering. It was there he received a simple challenge from a professor:
“Professor James Ary – during Introduction to Semiconductor Physics—told us that the subject matter was challenging and that he hadn’t given out an A in about 15 years,” recalled Petrossian. “As a punk 20-year-old, I wanted to prove him wrong, and that eventually led me to getting my PhD in the field.”
Nowadays, Petrossian is CEO of two biomedical companies, Neurolutions and Nile AI.
Neurolutions is responsible for the IpsiHand, an FDA-authorized exoskeleton, combined with a brain-computer interface that helps stroke patients regain mobility through retraining the brain. The IpsiHand moves based on signals from the healthy parts of the brain, giving patients an opportunity to strengthen connections and encouraging new pathways to uninjured parts of the brain.
“If you spend an hour a day doing this exercise of thinking and visualizing opening and closing a hand, five days a week for 12 weeks, you retrain a different part of the brain to drive that previously disabled appendage,” Petrossian told NPR in 2021, soon after the product went to market.
His other company, Nile AI, uses machine learning to improve epilepsy patient outcomes by streaming the individualized treatment process. It comes recommended by the Epilepsy Foundation.
Over the years, Petrossian estimates that he has raised nearly $200 million for his products.
“Partially, why these [products] are successful is because people can understand them. Trust is crucial in medicine,” he said. “Anyone can learn to code; it’s about knowing which code needs to be written.”
Those at CSULB can still find Petrossian on campus talking to classes he’d taken as an undergraduate or giving seniors feedback during the Senior Design Expo, helping to shape another generation of engineers.
“I remember [Professor] Maryam Moussavi telling me ‘keep going,’” he said. “You never know where you’re going to find a nugget of truth that sticks with you. If I can provide that for one person, then mission accomplished.”
