Our Story

Simbex was founded in Lebanon, New Hampshire in 2000 by longtime entrepreneur, CEO and current Simbex Advisor Rick Greenwald, PhD, and serial entrepreneur Robert C. Dean, ScD.

Ten years before Simbex was founded, while pursuing a doctorate in bioengineering at the University of Utah, Rick spent a morning in Park City watching the U.S. freestyle aerial ski team practice. He counted more than six jumps where the skiers hit their heads on the ground and wondered how this was affecting the skiers. How could data be collected from each head impact? Could that data be used to help physicians better understand brain injuries or to improve upon current helmets and protective equipment? 

Evolving technology best suited to address these questions combined with the process for research, product development, and translation to market formed the core principles of Simbex. These principles guided its growth from a small product-focused startup to a leading medical technology development firm over the last 20 years. 

Over the last two decades, Simbex has developed and launched multiple medical technologies focused on injury prevention, mobility, and rehabilitation, generating and commercializing its own intellectual property. Many of these early product developments were supported by federally funded Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards from the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, and National Science Foundation. 

Active Contact System, a volume management technology for lower limb prosthetics, launched to the market in 2002. The HIT System launched in 2004, and ActiveStep for fall prevention launched in 2006. The original HIT technology was developed into a blast-and-blunt impact monitoring system for evaluation by the US Army. Since 2004, Simbex has worked closely with Riddell to create groundbreaking on-field head impact monitoring systems for both research purposes and use in popular sports. This led to the implementation of Head Impact Exposure (HIE) metrics in helmeted sports, which are now analyzed in educational and clinical settings and supported by dozens of peer-reviewed publications. 

In 2001, Jeff Chu, MS, joined Simbex as Rick’s business partner and long-time Chief Technology Officer, to contribute on all aspects of the company’s growth and culture. Jeff and Rick collaborated as lead inventors for Simbex’s patents and intellectual property, principal investigators on several funded SBIR and basic science programs, leaders of Simbex’s technology and business development, and set the standard for engineering excellence and creative problem-solving. 

Jonathan Beckwith, MS, was VP of Research and Development from 2004-2019, and played an integral leadership role in the accompanying federally funded NIH and DoD scientific research and publications that underpin all of Simbex’s technology. Jeff and Jonathan managed teams of internal Simbex engineers, researchers, and commercialization experts, along with our many external partners and collaborators at leading brands and research institutions. John Stephens and Dave Bertoni, long-time business partners and friends of Simbex, helped contribute to Simbex’s long-term success. Several other individuals and companies have also contributed to Simbex’s commercialization journey.

Simbex led the development and implementation of two federally funded technology commercialization centers with CEO Rick Greenwald as co-Director: the Center for Translation of Rehabilitation Engineering Advances and Technology (TREAT), which was part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Medical Rehabilitation Research Resource Network (MR3), and funded by the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research (NCMRR) in the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD) through awards R24HD065703 and P2CHD086841 from 2010-2021, as well as the FDA-funded New England Pediatric Device Consortium (NEPDC; P50FD004907) from 2013-2018. 

TREAT and NEPDC advanced over 500 medical product ideas and were the basis for Simbex’s ongoing commercialization services offerings to clients. Simbex was also a lead participant in the NIH/NIGMS-funded DRIVEN consortium and partnered with Celdara Medical for technology commercialization.

Our experience in working with Riddell to create new products and technologies at scale informs the work we do with all our customers. With our product design expertise and Riddell’s resources, we have new opportunities to create transformative health technologies like the next-generation Axiom helmets designed to be completely custom-tailored to a football player’s head shape for maximum protection. Riddell’s InSite helmet-based impact monitoring system and analytics platform is a direct result of our enduring partnership in sports technology innovation, and we’re excited for a collaborative future together. 

What began as a commercialization platform for Simbex products has evolved into a product commercialization engine for creating our products, assisting external partners in their product development process, and guiding other innovators through the product commercialization process with one common theme in mind: helping people get healthy and stay healthy. 

Today, Simbex brings together a diverse team with cutting-edge expertise in product development, science, data, and analytics to tackle complex ideas and create commercially successful products.

Our Team