Overview

Gender

male

Dr. Auth received his Ph.D. in Physics from Georgetown University in 1969, and joined the faculty of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington that year.

He taught electrical engineering and the newly-created field of bioengineering there for 13 years, and ran a lab that integrated both fields. Dr. Auth and his graduate students pioneered several new medical device platform technologies including contact laser surgery, ophthalmic holography, and transendoscopic limited injury hemostasis resulting in the fast pulse thermal cautery probe which was licensed by the University of Washington to Olympus Corp.

(Olympus HPU®) With his students he performed the seminal investigation of impedance limited, controlled injury, multipolar cauterization leading to two highly successful inventions: American Cystoscope BICAP® and the Novacept/CYTYC/Hologic global endometrial ablation device Novasure® (2009 revenue of approx. $300 million).

He left academia in 1982 to become Director of New Product Ventures for Squibb Medical Systems Group, then he started the Biophysics International division of E.R. Squibb and Sons, Inc. He continued with Squibb until 1989, when he founded Heart Technology, Inc. to develop and commercialize his rotational atherectomy (Rotablator®) device.

The Rotablator® is a catheter-based device that uses high speed rotational ablation to remove atherosclerotic plaque from coronary arteries. Dr. Auth ran Heart Technology as its CEO for six years, growing it to 500 employees and $80 million in revenue, before it was sold to Boston Scientific for $600 million in 1995.

In addition to Arstasis, Dr. Auth is Chairman and CEO of Coaptus Medical Corporation and serves on the boards of directors of eight medical device companies. He has previously served on the boards of Integra LifeSciences, Novacept and Radiotherapeutics. .

He has maintained his ties with academia serving since 1985 as an Affiliate Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington.