MEET THE TEAM
Dr. Makoto Nonaka, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Makoto Nonaka is educated and trained as a physician and researcher in Japan and the United States. He received an M.D. degree from the Jikei University School of Medicine in Tokyo and a Ph.D. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. Then, he became an Assistant Professor at the Department of Immunology at the University of Tokyo. He returned to the U.S. and acquired vast experience and expertise in medicine and business. He is the Founding President of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI), for which he raised the largest single funding in Southern California's basic biomedical research history in the 1980s - more than $50 million. Today, LJI has over 490 employees, including 230 Ph.D. and M.D. doctoral investigators with nearly $100 million in funds annually, and has become one of the best immunology research organizations in the United States. Dr. Nonaka started several venture businesses in the U.S. in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, computers, and communications.
Dr. Mark D. Wiederhold, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Mark D. Wiederhold serves as Chief Executive Officer of the Virtual Reality Medical Center (VRMC), a professional medical corporation with offices in San Diego, La Jolla, and Coronado, California; Brussels, Belgium; and Qingdao, China. Prior to establishing VRMC, he was an Internal Medicine and Critical Care Specialist at the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla for fifteen years. He also was the Director of Clinical Research in the Department of Internal Medicine. He has a Ph.D. in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology and was on the faculty of Rush Medical College, where he earned his M.D. degree. He was an adjunct faculty member in Internal Medicine at the University of California San Diego.
Dr. Wiederhold serves on numerous scientific and technical advisory committees and panels and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians (FACP). He has completed over 300 publications and serves as a reviewer for the Center for Scientific Review, National Institutes of Health. He founded the CyberPsychology & Behavior Journal nineteen years ago and served as its Editor-in-Chief. He has received multiple awards and several patents. He has bid, won, and successfully completed over 60 government contracts and awards as the prime contractor.
Dr. Brenda K. Wiederhold, Ph.D., MBA
Professor Dr. Brenda K. Wiederhold, Ph.D., MBA, BCB, BCN is Co-Founder of the Virtual Reality Medical Center, and founder of Interactive Media Institute. A Licensed Clinical Psychologist in U.S. and Europe, she is a Visiting Professor at the Catholic University in Milan. Her doctorate is in Clinical Health Psychology, and she is on the Medical Staff at Scripps Memorial Hospital, La Jolla. Editor-in-Chief of the Medline journal CyberPsychology, Behavior & Social Networking, she has also organized the CyberPsychology, CyberTherapy & Social Networking Conference for the past 25 years, published over 300 scientific articles and 18 books, conducted over 10,000 VR therapy sessions and given invited lectures and training programs in 29 countries throughout Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East. Her career has included strategic consulting for United Healthcare, serving as an Innovation Expert for the European Commission and serving as Senior Behavioral Healthcare Consultant for the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act. A U.S. citizen, Dr. Wiederhold has lived and worked in Asia, Switzerland, Austria, and Belgium.