The department is delighted to welcome Professor of Practice Dr.
Lawrence Boyd! His more than two decades of experience leading
product development, engineering and business development
efforts for medical devices in orthopaedic and spine surgery will
be invaluable to our students. Many may find the range of his
accomplishments, including earning a PhD 18 years after graduation
with a Clemson MS and doing early work on disc replacement, eyeopening
and inspirational.
Dr. Boyd is president and founder of Palmetto Biomedical, a
medical device design and consulting firm based in Columbia. In
addition to having founded two medical device-focused ventures
(OrthoClip LLC and View Medical), Dr. Boyd is a prolific inventor,
with over 60 issued U.S. patents for medical devices and related
procedures. Previously, he was Executive Vice President of R&D for
Spinal Elements, a medical device firm based in Marietta, Georgia,
and Carlsbad, California. Prior to that position, Dr. Boyd was a
Director for Medtown Ventures, an Atlanta-based venture investing
and consulting firm.
After receiving his BS in Mechanical Engineering and MS in
Bioengineering from Clemson University in 1989, Dr. Boyd became
product development group leader and engineer at Dow Corning
Wright in Arlington, TN. During his three years there, he developed
implants for use in hands, feet, and knees. He then moved on to
work for a small start-up company in Memphis, then Danek Medical
and later, Sofamor Danek. The company’s focus was in an emerging
arena for medical implants, spinal fusion. Dr. Boyd worked in the
area of intervertebral body fusion and artificial disc replacement.
Holding positions of manager, director and group director, Dr. Boyd
focused his efforts on research, development and commercialization
of novel medical technologies. To further his leadership skills, he
enrolled in a Master of Engineering Management program that
offered evening classes at Christian Brothers University. Medtronic
later acquired Sofamor Danek and promoted him to vice president
of product development.
Dr. Martine LaBerge, department chair, said, “Not only is Larry
Boyd superbly qualified to guide our students, he will provide
support to faculty and staff to assure we fulfill our strategic goal to
support economic development through translational research and
technology innovation.”
Recognizing the growing importance of recombinant proteins,
human tissues and other biologically inspired materials and potential
for applications to spine, he started on his PhD in biomedical
engineering at Duke University in 2000, working in the laboratory of
biomedical engineering professor Lori Setton, PhD. He collaborated
with Duke orthopaedic and neurosurgical spinal surgeons in research
to elucidate the pathogenesis of spinal degeneration using a mouse
model of disc degeneration.
Dr. Boyd has a particular interest in and extensive experience
with orthopaedic biomaterials including growth factors, synthetic
bioactive bone grafts and human allografts. While at Sofamor
Danek, he was responsible for engineering support of preclinical
and clinical studies to secure approval for rhBMP-2 (InFuse). He
has a certificate in Biomolecular and Tissue Engineering from Duke
University. More recently, Dr. Boyd served as Vice President of
Engineering and Business Development for the Biologics Division at
Spine Wave (Shelton CT) from 2013 to 2015. He has worked on a
number of tissue-based materials, including during engagements at
the University of Florida Tissue Bank (now RTI) and the University
of Miami Tissue Bank (now Vivex).
Dr. Boyd received his PhD in the summer of 2007 and accepted a
position as Associate Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship
and Research Commercialization at Duke. In addition, he was
an adjunct professor for the Biomedical Engineering Department
and the Masters of Engineering Management Program at Duke.
While at Duke, he developed and taught classes in technology
commercialization, risk management, engineering design, and
leadership. He established and led the DU Hatch student business
incubator, which serves graduate, professional and undergraduate
students.
Jenny Bourne, editor
