Hi, I am Diego. I am an entrepreneur, researcher, and engineer passionate about healthcare innovation. I believe that the way to create amazing products and services is by building and developing teams with passion and a shared purpose to make our world a better place.
My background
After spending some time as an engineer working on banking, government, and education projects, I decided to go back to school. I did my master’s degree and thanks to Dr. Marcela Hernandez, I fell in love with Biomedical Engineering! During this time, I studied computer vision, augmented reality, and image processing among other amazingly interesting topics. My master’s degree opened the possibility to travel to France and Australia where I worked on healthcare projects. Then, I moved to Canada and did my Ph.D. under the supervision of Dr. Terry Peters. There, I studied epilepsy and applied machine learning techniques to localize the origin of seizures, improving surgical outcomes.
I did my post-doctoral fellowship at Western University in collaboration with IBM Research (Almaden). At this time, I developed deep-learning applications to solve medical imaging problems. One of my projects dealt with the identification of anatomy in ultrasound to improve image-guided procedures (e.g. epidural injections and spinal taps). Another project focused on brain histology prediction from high-resolution MRI at 7 Tesla, which reduces the need for invasive brain biopsies.
In my free time, I wrote the WebGL beginners guide, a primer for learning computer graphics using the modern web stack. This book was the first of its kind. Later on, I participated in a second book project entitled WebGL Insights, showcasing novel ideas in the world of web-based computer graphics.
Ezra: early cancer detection
In July 2018, I co-founded EZRA, where I served as Chief Technical Officer (CTO). Our mission was simple: help everybody in the world to find cancer early. At Ezra, I built engineering and research teams from scratch, implementing the best engineering, cybersecurity, and regulatory practices to provide the best services to our customers.
In 2020, I led the team that obtained the first-ever prostate segmentation AI cleared by FDA.
In 2021, we made it into Forbes AI Top 50: America’s most promising AI companies, and in 2021 our innovations team created the Reporter AI: an AI that reads radiology reports and provides explanations or recommendations based on health findings.
I am grateful to all the people who made Ezra’s mission a reality: our investors, business partners and our amazing team! Now, I am going on to my next adventure.