Charles Bridges, MD, MS, ScD
Advisory Board

Charles Bridges, MD, MS, ScD, is a member of the BioVentures MedTech Board of Advisors. Charles is currently the Chief Scientific Officer of Corvista Health. CorVista Health (formerly known as Analytics 4 Life) is a medical device manufacturing company that specializes in the fields of machine learning, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence to develop a completely new form of medical imaging. Dr. Bridges brings over 35 years of healthcare experience as both a leading cardiac surgeon and investigator and also as a serial healthcare company leader in both global and earlier stage companies.  

Previously, Dr. Bridges was Chief Technology Officer and Head of Cross Enterprise Innovation for the Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Therapeutic Areas at Janssen Pharmaceuticals, of Johnson and Johnson, Inc (JNJ). At JNJ Charles served as the scientific lead on nearly $1 billion of cardiovascular and neurovascular device equity investments and acquisitions including the development of the first ever FDA-approved neurovascular device to treat heart failure.  In 2021, at JNJ he received the Juan A. Simpson Outstanding Employee Service Award for “excellence both personally and professionally”.  He is also the co-founder of an early stage biotech company in the muscular dystrophy gene therapy space.

Prior to JMJ, , Dr. Bridges was the first African American Full Professor of Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania, Chief of Cardiac Surgery at Pennsylvania Hospital, and Professor and Chairman of the Department of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery at Carolina’s HealthCare System. During his academic career, Charles received $10 million in continuous National Institutes of Health (NIH) RO1 funding, had 175 peer-reviewed publications and 15 patents issued.

Dr. Bridges received his bachelor’s degree in Applied Physics from Harvard College magna cum laude, entered Harvard Medical School at age 18 and graduated with honors. Charles also earned a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a Doctor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  In 2022, he was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering.