Focused ultrasound (FUS) or "curing with sounds” is a revolutionary non-invasive medical therapy. It sends harmless sound waves to treat over 160 medical conditions, where this number has increased 4 times in the past 4 years. FUS is used in cancer treatment with no surgery or chemotherapy, and brain conditions without opening the skull, to name a few. We, at Yektasonics, have innovation in ultrasound to be used in FUS medical devices as well as other non-medical applications.
In ultrasound, they use sophisticated electronic systems to drive transducers (the element that generates acoustic waves). These drivers are single channel Power Modules or multi-channel Phased Arrays, which are our technology at Yektasonics. The problem is these Power Modules and Phased Arrays are very expensive and they have performance limitations.
We have solutions that are an order of magnitude lower cost, with some performance breakthroughs. We successfully shipped and sold our first batch of our Power Modules last year to a major ultrasound company, and they have reordered a new batch. We are wrapping up our Phased Array to be launched this year, and we are going to miniaturize our technology for some portable ultrasound applications, such as ultrasonic Deep Brain Stimulator (uDBS). uDBS will replace the current severely invasive Deep Brain Stimulator (DBS), used in neurologic conditions such as Parkinson and Epilepsy.
Yektasonics has received numerous awards/recognitions, such as a National Science Foundation award for I-Corps 2023, being a finalist of American Heart Association in Bay Area in 2022, an award from the UC Santa Cruz Chancellor at Launchpad 2022, a finalist of UC Berkeley Big Ideas Competitions in 2021, and being a company in residence at UC Berkeley Citris Foundry in 2020. The current R&D is sponsored by the University of California, with exclusive IP ownership by Yektasonics.
We are seeking a passionate and talented Business Development Staff for our upcoming NSF I-Corps program to develop our business model based on Lean Launchpad methodology. We want to find the market opportunities for our Power Module, our Phased Array, and our future portable ultrasound device in both medical and non-medical sectors. The staff can also be part of other business activities later on, such as scaling the company, raising capital, marketing, and more.
If you are interested, please email your resume as well as your transcript to Navid Gougol at ngougol@ucsc.edu, who is the CEO/Founder of Yektasonics and a doctorate student at UCSC. You can check out the company website for more information at www.yektasonics.com.