Executive Management

Craig T. Davenport
CEO, Xhale Innovations

Mr. Davenport has over 35 years of experience in the health care industry and has a proven track record of leading, building, managing and investing in rapidly growing medical device technology companies. He has served as a Director on the Board for 18 early stage or emerging growth healthcare companies.

Recently, he was Chairman, President & CEO of Endocare and over six years built the company into a leading provider of minimally invasive technologies to treat prostate, kidney, lung and other cancers using cryotherapy. Earlier in his career, Mr. Davenport was C.O.O & President of Tokos Medical Corporation when it was an early stage medical device manufacturer and clinical services provider, and over nine years he spearheaded the company's growth from a handful of people to more than 3,000 employees, took the Company public in 1990 and grew revenues from $3.7 million to more than $120 million. Mr. Davenport began his career with American Hospital Supply Corporation.

In addition to his management and leadership experience, most recently, Mr. Davenport was CEO & Managing Partner of the D.W. Group a private investment firm he founded in 1993. Over the years the firm has been an active investor in numerous early stage and emerging growth healthcare companies. Some of the investments made through the D. W. Group have included Vescia Medical (sold to Boston Scientific), Sapient Health Network (sold to WebMD), Cohesion Technologies (sold to AngioTech) and Paradigm Health Services (sold to Inverness Medical).

Kim Barkman, BSN, MSIT, MBA
Executive Vice President, Xhale Innovations
Ms. Barkman has extensive Healthcare industry experience with a focus on the blending of Healthcare and Technology. Her background as a registered nurse in Critical Care environments lead to an interest in Clinical Information Systems.  Various Healthcare Informatics roles at Orlando Health have included Management Engineering using Six Sigma methodology, IT Project Management with certification and IT consulting.  Responsibilities included identifying ways that IT can improve workflow with a concentration on benefits realization as well as an emphasis on understanding core business processes in preparing for the implementation of technological solutions.  She worked for a number of years in the Australian Healthcare system before returning to the US to serve as the Director of Clinical Informatics/Development at the Aetna Specialty Pharmacy and then as Director of Business Intelligence/Data Warehousing with Adventist Healthcare system.  She received her BSN degree from the University of Florida, MSIT from Barry University and her MBA with focus in Marketing from Webster University.  She has been awarded National Board Certification as an Informatics Nurse. 

Brent Johnson
Vice President of Sales, Xhale Innovations
Mr. Johnson has over 25 years in the medical device industry leading worldwide sales and marketing teams through direct and distribution sales channels. Most recently he spent 11 years as Worldwide VP of Sales and Marketing at Invivo Corp where he was responsible for the commercialization of Invivo's products which included patient monitoring products for both MRI and anesthesia areas along with MRI RF coils and MRI CAD systems. During his tenure at Invivo, he was responsible for numerous global product launches of new technology that helped grow the organization from a small nitch market company to a global leader in patient monitoring and MRI products. He was also actively involved with Invivo's acquisition strategy and led many of the integration projects which ultimately culminated in Philips acquisition of Invivo in 2007. Previous to his experience at Invivo he spent 11 years with Datascope Corp in a variety of sales and sales management roles. Mr. Johnson graduated from San Diego State University with a degree in Business Administration / Finance.

Richard J. Melker, M.D., Ph.D.
Chief Technology Officer
Dr. Melker, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer with Xhale, received his Ph.D. (Neurobiology) and M.D. degrees from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. After a residency in Pediatrics, and fellowships in Pediatric Cardiology and Critical Care Medicine, he served as Director of Emergency Services at Shands Hospital at the University of Florida College of Medicine, as well as Medical Liaison for the NASA space shuttle program. He holds the position of Professor of Anesthesiology, Pediatrics and Biomedical Engineering at U.F. and since 1993 has been Director of the Florida Anesthesiology Computer and Engineering Team (FACET) which develops and licenses medical devices and technologies. Dr. Melker holds over 35 issued U.S. patents including several for emergency medical devices in use throughout the world, and by the U.S. Special Forces.

Donn Dennis, M.D., F.A.H.A., CSO
Chief Science Officer
Dr. Dennis, co-founder of Xhale with Mr. Allen and Dr. Melker, serves as the company's Chief Science Officer. He is a board certified anesthesiologist, and previously served as Vice President of Pharmacology at ARYx Therapeutics in Fremont, CA.. In addition to his work with Xhale, Dr. Dennis is a professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology, Psychiatry and Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics in the College of Medicine at the University of Florida (U.F.), where he also holds the Joachim S. Gravenstein M.D. Endowed Chair in Anesthesiology. He is also the Director of Nanomedicine at the University of Florida.

Dr. Dennis' research interests focus on translating fundamental science findings in the areas of cardiovascular biology and nanotechnology into medically useful, commercially viable products (e.g., new chemical entities, nano-based drug delivery systems and sensors). He has a long track record of R&D experience, including co-developing drugs and consulting with several small, medium and large pharmaceutical companies and large biotech and health care venture capital funds. Dr. Dennis has been the recipient or co-recipient of several federal grants in the areas of bionanotechnology and cardiovascular pharmacology, and is a co-inventor on several drug- and bio-nano patent applications. Dr. Dennis has published over 150 full length manuscripts and abstracts in peer reviewed journals and has edited two textbooks. He is also a regular member of NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC) site visit teams. Dr. Dennis was recently elected to the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Anesthesia Education & Research FAER). He received his medical degree during 1986 from the University of Michigan.

Hank Wohltjen, Ph.D.
Vice President of Engineering - Xhale, Inc.
Dr. Wohltjen focuses on applying the latest advances in microsensor technologies to the analysis of exhaled breath as a diagnostic matrix. Trained as both an electrical engineer and a chemist, Dr. Wohltjen has been actively engaged in the development and commercialization of novel chemical sensing devices and systems since 1976. In the 1980’s he formed the Chemical Microsensor research group at the US Naval Research Lab that pioneered a number of important advances in chemical sensor technology. Later he founded Microsensor Systems, Inc. (MSI) and led the commercial development of Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) microsensors for detecting chemical warfare threats. Over the years Dr. Wohltjen has been the principal investigator on more than $10M of federally funded sensor R&D programs. In 1995 his previous company, MSI, was recognized with the Tibbetts Award from the US Small Business Administration for its successful participation in numerous SBIR programs. Presently Dr. Wohltjen also serves as a director on several boards of academic institutions and small technology-focused companies.

Elena Casson, MBA
Director of Marketing, Xhale Innovations
Elena Casson has more than 20 years of experience in the marketing and design.  At Xhale, Ms. Casson is the Director of Marketing for HyGreen and manages Business Development and Marketing for the Xhale’s pharmaceutical division.  She was with the University of Florida for over 17 years in the College of Public Health and Health Professions and was the project manager for the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center.   Her last four years were as director of the International Conference on Aging and Disability, bringing researchers, academicians and policy leaders from all over the world to discuss the issues of aging and disability. Over the years, Ms. Casson has edited 29 publications, co-authored five manuscripts, and written 17 successful grant applications.  She has also volunteered marketing and PR services to several charities including Sustainable Cambodia, the NACD and Rotary.