Executive Committee

J. Chris Castel PhD received his PhD at Showa University in Tokyo, Japan in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Research. His expertise is in the development, regulatory approval and commercialization of therapeutic medical devices for physical medicine, rehabilitation, and wound healing. Dr. Castel has and continues to manage numerous clinical trials for energy delivery medical devices in the fields of PBM, Ultrasonics, Electrotherapy, and PEMF. His previous company’s products and services were deployed in over 6,000 post-acute care facilities nationwide and provided advanced technologies for pain management, stroke recovery, wound care, and incontinence management. He has extensive experience in the medical device regulatory approval process with the FDA, national and international regulatory agencies and oversaw the process and obtained positive national coverage determinations from CMS for Electrotherapy devices in wound healing and incontinence management, along with a team of professional associations and industry leaders. Having founded and sold three medical device companies successfully to major strategic partners, he became interested in, and established a new venture, CareWear, to develop patient oriented therapeutic wearables which use breakthrough technologies such as printed light and ultrasonic substrates. CareWear was a 2018 SPIE Startup Challenge winner. Dr. Castel holds numerous patents and has published extensively. As an international lecturer he has taught and presented at a post-graduate global level in such areas as neurorehabilitation, pain management, LLLT – PBM, Magnetic Field Therapy and Ultrasonics. He was one of the first researchers during the 1980s to publish the effects of infrared and red light on collagen synthesis and has spent his career developing new technologies to treat pain and accelerate healing. He looks forward to bringing PBM to mainstream medicine.

Dr. Arany is trained as a dentist, oral pathologist and bioengineer. He did his dental training from Rajiv Gandhi University, India and his Ph.D. from Harvard University, Boston followed by postdoctoral fellowships at the Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, India, National Cancer Institute, NIH, Bethesda and Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Science, Cambridge. He also has certificates in clinical research from Harvard Medical School and National Institutes of Health. He is currently an Assistant Clinical Investigator at the National Institutes of Dental and Craniofacial Research, NIH, Bethesda. Dr. Arany’s research is focused on the molecular mechanisms of low level light-photobiomodulation to direct specific biological processes especially stem cell differentiation and tissue regeneration. His other major areas of interest are the molecular dichotomy of wounds and tumors, cell signaling regulatory networks and Transforming Growth Factor-beta biology. He has over 35 publications and 3 book chapters. He has received numerous awards such as the NCI Director’s Young Investigator Award, NIH Merit award, Wound Healing Society’s Young Investigator Award, Eugene Seidner scholar, among others. He has been invited to speak in various national and international forums. He is currently associate editor of the International Journal of Oral & Maxillofacial Biology and member of various committees of Wound Healing Society and American Association of Dental Research and the North American Association for Light Therapy. He reviews for many journals including Lasers in Medical Sciences, Photomedicine and Laser Surgery, Journal of Dental Research, Wound Repair and Regeneration, Advances in wound care, Cleft Plate and Craniofacial Journal Biology, Triple O, Tissue Engineering, among others. Dr. Arany has been actively involved with NAALT and is currently the President-elect; Chair, Science committee; Editor, newsletter; and facebook administrator.