John A. Parrish

Chief Executive Officer. Parrish champions multidisciplinary research that accelerates technological innovation in clinical care. Trained in internal medicine, dermatology, and clinical research, he developed innovative and now widely adopted therapies to treat skin diseases using ultraviolet light. He worked with physicists and engineers to provide the fundamental platform launching many uses of lasers in surgery and dermatology. Parrish founded both the MGH-Wellman Center for Photomedicine, the first and now the largest multidisciplinary research group investigating therapeutic uses of light and the Harvard-MGH-Cutaneous Biology Research Center. Parrish also founded and now directs CIMIT, a Boston-based consortium of medical and engineering institutions working together to identify, motivate and facilitate innovators in care primarily in the domain of devices, procedures and systems engineering. Over $500 million have been invested in the launch of these three centers. Dr. Parrish has authored over 300 publications and 8 books, including descriptions of his military service in Vietnam and subsequent 40-year struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder. In 2009 he became the founding director of the Red Sox Foundation - Massachusetts General Hospital Home Base Program, committed to identify, motivate and treat veterans with invisible wounds of war. Dr. Parrish headed the Department of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School and at Massachusetts General Hospital and is now the Edward Wigglesworth Professor Emeritus at Harvard Medical School. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine, National Academies of Science and has served on the board of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute and the Defense Science Board.