Management

Joshua Feast, CEO and Founder
Joshua’s track-record includes a decade delivering enterprise software solutions to human services, government and financial services clients. Prior to founding Cogito, Joshua worked at Accenture, Microsoft and as an independent technology consultant. He holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management where he was the Platinum-Triangle Fulbright Scholar in Entrepreneurship, and a Bachelor of Technology in Product Development from Massey University in New Zealand.

Ali Azarbayejani, Ph.D., CTO
Ali has 13 years of commercial experience as a scientist, entrepreneur, and designer of world-class computational technologies. His pioneering doctoral research at the MIT Media Lab in probabilistic modeling for 3-D vision was the basis for his first startup company Alchemy 3D Technology, which created the market in the film and video post-production industry for camera matchmoving software. He has consulted in software development and business strategy and has been on the research staff at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs contributing to leading technologies focused on software-based digital signal processing and computational modeling and algorithms.

Alex (Sandy) Pentland, Ph.D., Scientific Visionary and Founder
Sandy is the pioneer of reality mining technology and a leader in ubiquitous information systems. He is the founder and Director of Human Dynamics Research within the MIT Media Laboratory. He is a co-founder of the Center for Future Health at the University of Rochester, and is one of the most-cited computer scientists in the world. Sandy has won numerous international awards in the Arts, Sciences and Engineering. He was chosen by Newsweek as one of the 100 Americans most likely to shape the next century.

Peter Costello, VP Sales and Marketing
Peter has almost 20 years of experience in health care and technology. Previously, he was Vice President of Web and eBusiness at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts and Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Excellus Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Rochester, NY. Peter co-founded two technology-based start-ups; IPC, which developed high technology packaging solutions for the DVD industry, and MBS Solutions, which developed employer decision support systems to predict the outcomes of using high deductible health plans to self-fund benefit plans. Prior to his industry experience, Peter served as an officer, aviator and engineer in the United States Navy. He received his bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics from Providence College and his MBA in Finance and Statistics from the University of Illinois.

Chuan Zhang, Director of Operations
Chuan Zhang has a M.Eng from MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. At Cogito, Chuan has worked on every technical aspect ranging from audio signal processing, model development and IT infrastructure. Prior to joining Cogito, Chuan worked on radar signal processing at BAE Systems and factory robotics programming at General Motors. His interests include biomedical signal processing, image processing, and algorithms.

Charlie Popkin, CFO
Charlie is a seasoned financial professional with experience growing companies in fast paced environments. Charlie was the Chief Financial Officer of The Merallis Company, a technology services firm located in Rocky Hill, CT. Prior to Merallis, Charlie was a founding management member of PQC, Inc., a management services company which he helped grow to $80M in revenue. Charlie also founded Medical Claims Management (MCM), a practice reimbursement management and consulting firm. Earlier in his career Charlie worked as a Senior Consultant for Price Waterhouse and as Senior Accountant for Deloitte & Touche. He is a CPA, has a B.S. in Accountancy an A.S. in Management from Bentley College and an M.M. in Finance and Business Policy from the J.L. Kellogg School at Northwestern University.

Our team would like to thank the many people and organizations that helped us get started and continue to provide great support and advice. These include the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, the MIT Venture Mentoring Service, LifeTech Boston, and Fulbright New Zealand.