- Alfred E. Mann
Alfred E. Mann (born 1925, Portland, OR), who is also known as Al Mann, is an American
entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is abillionaire .Born and raised in Portland, his father was English and mother Polish. He moved to
Los Angeles, California in 1946 and has remained there ever since. He received his B.S. and M.S. inphysics from theUniversity of California, Los Angeles , doing graduate work in nuclear andmathematical physics . Mann holds honorary doctorate degrees from theUniversity of Southern California ,The Johns Hopkins University ,Western University , and theTechnion Institute (Israel).Business
In 1956, Mann founded
Spectrolab , the first of hisaerospace companies. While at Spectrolab, an electrooptical systems company, he also foundedHeliotek , asemiconductor company, that became a major supplier ofsolar cell s forspacecraft . Among other accomplishments during his tenure, Mann's companies provided the electric power for over 100 spacecraft and constructed one of the lunar experiments. Although he sold both companies toTextron in 1960 (merged into one, Spectrolab is now a subsidiary ofBoeing Satellite Systems ) he continued to manage them until 1972. After he left those companies to foundPacesetter Systems , which focused on cardiac pacemakers, he sold that company in 1985 and managed it until 1992. It is now a part ofSt. Jude Medical . Mann then went on to establishMiniMed (insulin pump s and continuous glucose devices, now owned byMedtronic ) andAdvanced Bionics (neuroprosthetics ), which was owned byBoston Scientific from 2004-2008.Boston Scientific and theAdvanced Bionics management had agreed to split the company. Under this split, Boston Scientific would own the pain management and other neural stimulation portions and Advanced Bionics would focus on developing, manufacturing and distributing cochlear implants for the restoration of hearing to the deaf.He is currently involved in several companies, including:
*Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board ofMannKind Corporation , abiomedical company working ona unique inhalable insulin for the treatment ofdiabetes and therapeutic vaccines for cancer;
*founder and Chairman of Second Sight, a biomed company working on aretinal prosthesis ;
*founder and Chairman ofBioness , a company devoted to applyingelectrostimulation for functional neural defects such as paralysis;
*founder and Chairman of the Board ofQuallion, LLC , a company producing high reliability batteries for medical products and for the military and aerospace industries;
*Chairman of Stellar Microelectronics, an electronic circuit manufacturer for the medical, military and aerospace industries;
* Mann also chairs the Southern California Biomedical Council (SCBC orSoCalBio ), a trade association that represents and promotes the growth of the life-science community in the Greater Los Angeles region (see: http://www.socalbio.org).'
* Serves on the Board of Directors and is the largest investor inEclipse Aviation Philanthropy
Alfred Mann has made major philanthropic contributions. His two most notable are below.
Alfred Mann Institutes
Mr. Mann has so far established Alfred E. Mann Institutes for
Biomedical Engineering at theUniversity of Southern California (USC), known as AMI/USC ($162 million); at Purdue known as AMI/Purdue ($100 million); and at the Technion known as AMIT ($104 million) arebusiness incubators formedical device development in preparation forcommercialization . The Institutes are essentially fully funded. Three other universities are in late stage discussions and one is likely to be announced during 2007. AMI was founded in 1998 when Alfred Mann made his first $100 million gift to USC, a major privateresearch university in Los Angeles. The total gifted endowment for AMI/USC is $162 million since then.The Alfred Mann Foundation for Biomedical Engineering is charged with selecting, establishing and overseeing the institutes, similar to AMI at USC and at other research universities.
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