Our Story

An entrepreneur, engineer, inventor, Tamer currently serves as our President and Chief Executive Officer. Tamer co-founded Aspect in 2013 and has played a leading role in our overall corporate, business, and technology development. Under his leadership, we have secured significant funding, entered strategic collaborations with best-in-class pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and developed our commercial products. In his previous appointment as Chief Technology Officer of the company, Tamer drove the innovation and development of the company’s core technologies and intellectual property. 

As a leader in the field of 3D bioprinting, he has been invited to speak on this topic at venues ranging from TEDx to industry, scientific, and executive conferences. In 2017, he was awarded BC's Top 40 under 40 award for demonstrating excellence in business, judgement, leadership, and community contribution. Tamer serves on the Board of Directors for The Stem Cell Network, an organization focused on building Canada’s stem cell and regenerative medicine research sector, and is an Advisory Board Member for the Knowledge Society (TKS), a 10-month accelerator program to train young people to solve the world's biggest problems using emerging technologies.

Tamer holds a B.A.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering and M.A.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of British Columbia.

Sam is the Chief Scientific Officer at Aspect and is responsible for our scientific innovation and development. He has over 10 years of experience leading world-class tissue engineering R&D and currently leads our technical efforts in developing bioprinted tissue applications, both internally and externally. He is a recognized leader in the field of airway tissue engineering and has numerous publications in this area. 

As a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the UBC Institute for Heart and Lung Innovation at St. Paul’s Hospital, he spearheaded the BioAirway Research Offering New Concepts in Health (BRONCH) partnership, an interdisciplinary, cross-Canada research initiative to develop in vitro 3D human airway tissues. 

Sam holds a Ph.D. in respiratory cell biology from the University of Nottingham.

Simon is the Chief Technology Officer at Aspect and oversees Aspect’s microfluidic 3D bioprinting technology and product development. He leads our engineering team and the development of our core products including bioprinting systems, biomaterials, and microfluidic printheads. Simon is a principle inventor of Aspects microfluidic bioprinting technology with broad expertise developing advanced printing systems for applications including printed electronics, self-assembling nanomaterials, and biomaterials.

Simon holds a B.A.Sc. and M.A.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia.

As Chief Business Development Officer, Eric leads the expansion of our global partnerships with biopharmaceutical innovators. He has over 30 years of experience in the development of biopharmaceuticals, cell therapies, and regenerative medicine products. His leadership roles in the cell therapy industry spanned a multitude of responsibilities including leading early phase development, process optimization, clinical trial execution, and business development. Most recently during his decade-long tenure at Thermo Fisher Scientific, he was responsible for building global strategic alliances and expanding their Cell & Gene Therapy Business Unit. 

As Chief Financial Officer, Ray is responsible for the company's financial management and business operations. Ray is a seasoned financial executive with over 25 years of experience leading finance teams in rapidly growing businesses. After completing his studies in Mathematics and Computation from Loughborough University in the UK, he started his career at Ernst & Young (EY), where he was qualified as a Chartered Accountant. After his time at EY, he joined Eurand, a global specialty pharmaceutical company. As VP, Finance at Eurand, he helped grow the US company from 70 to 330 employees, increase annual revenue from single digits to over $100M, develop and launch Eurand’s first clinical product generating a new $100M revenue stream, and complete a $110M IPO on the NASDAQ in 2007.

Ray was later CFO at Recon Instruments, the world leader in Heads-up Display technology for sports environments that was acquired by Intel for over $175M. Most recently he was CFO of Cross Pacific Capital Partners and several of their portfolio companies in the high-tech space. During this period, he played a leading role in raising significant capital from multiple sources including Lenovo, M Ventures (the venture capital fund of Merck KGaA), and 3M while providing strong financial and operational leadership to multiple corporations across several countries.

Spiro is the VP of Tissue Engineering at Aspect and manages all partnered and internal tissue engineering programs. Spiro was trained as a reproductive and developmental biologist at the University of British Columbia prior to pursuing a postdoctoral fellowship in cell biology at Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, IL. At Northwestern, Spiro rose to the rank of a tenured Associate Professor of Dermatology and Director of Skin Tissue Engineering while securing federal and industrial funding for his team’s research on cell-cell adhesion and communication systems. 

In 2016, Spiro joined GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals in Collegeville, PA as a Director of Biology with a focus on delivering preclinical models for drug discovery and development.  He is an author on >60 research publications.