Matthew Waninger, Ph.D., has joined the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering as the inaugural Managing Director of the Crossroads Pediatric Device Consortium, a novel alliance formed between Purdue University, the Indiana University School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics, and medical device company Cook Medical to focus on unmet clinical needs in young patients. The mission of the consortium is to accelerate the development, approval, and availability of innovative medical devices for children.

“Children are an underserved patient population in terms of new medical technologies,” said Waninger. “Our goal is to encourage and help companies produce more pediatric medical devices.  Through our combined engineering, clinical, and manufacturing expertise we can make a real difference.”

The mission of Crossroads is personal to Waninger—all three of his sons were patients at Riley Hospital for Children. He understands the frustrations of pediatricians trying to make adult solutions work for children.

“My job, my mission, is to accelerate research on pediatric medical devices and translate them into the market at greater scale and scope,” said Waninger.

Waninger has more than 25 years of experience successfully translating novel ideas and concepts into successful clinical products. After earning his Ph.D. from Purdue, he began his career at MED Institute, where he was immediately tapped for leadership of one of Cook’s most significant development projects, the Zenith AAA Endovascular Graft. The development of this groundbreaking device, along with the clinical trial and regulatory approvals that followed created an entire new strategic business unit and a stream of successful products for Cook, and brought a life-saving device to patients. 

Waninger then moved to Bloomington where he served as Vice President and Global Functional Leader of Engineering. Under his engineering leadership, Cook launched 62 new products in less than 5 years.

Waninger returned to West Lafayette to serve as President of MED Institute, both in continuing leadership of MED in its original mission and by launching “new MED” to offer MED’s well-established expertise to entrepreneurs and non-Cook companies.  Most recently, Waninger served as Vice President of Product Approval Processes for Cook Advanced Technologies where, using his extensive experience with regulatory approvals and ability to build key relationships with FDA, led the regulatory efforts to bring some of Cook’s most novel technologies to the clinic and to the market.

“Pediatricians are often limited in their choices of available medical devices for treating these children who have medical needs distinct from adults,” said Waninger. “The Crossroads consortium seeks to catalyze collaboration between clinicians, researchers, and industry partners to quickly and successfully place promising new medical technologies into their hands.”

Waninger earned his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering degree from Purdue. After working for a few years, he returned for his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering focusing on automatic control systems and instrumentation. A class in his final semester led him to his interest in healthcare and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering with an emphasis on Biomedical Engineering. He studied under the direction of Leslie A. Geddes, Ph.D., Showalter Distinguished Professor Emeritus, and founder of the Hillenbrand Biomedical Engineering Center at Purdue. Waninger’s thesis focused on the control of heart rate in atrial fibrillation using vagus nerve stimulation.

Waninger lives in Lafayette with his wife Sandy and their three sons.

Learn more about the Crossroads Pediatric Device Consortium.