Colonel Mark S. Smyczynski, MD, PhD serves as the President and Founder of Heme Photonics LLC having successfully combined three different career paths over a period of forty years.
Dr. Smyczynski earned his medical degree in June 1982 from the Chicago Medical School and completed training in radiation oncology in June 1989 at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. He has practiced radiation oncology for thirty years and served as the Chief of Radiation Oncology for the VA Caribbean Health Care System in San Juan, Puerto Rico from July 2013 to December 2017.
Colonel Smyczynski served as a Flight Surgeon for the United States Air Force completing a total of twenty-six years of creditable service, with six years of active duty and twenty years of reserve duty. He retired as a full Colonel in April 2009 having been mobilized twice, once in January 1991 for Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm, and again in March 2003 for Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, during which he served as the Commander of the 86th Contingency Aeromedical Staging Facility at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where his deployed unit also provided direct support for Operation Noble Eagle and Operation Joint Guardian.
Dr. Smyczynski also has an established scientific career. He earned a PhD in Medical Physics in December 2008 from Wayne State University in Detroit, and he is first-author of two peer-reviewed papers that were published in February 2016 in the journal Transactions on Nuclear Science.
Dr. Smyczynski has stated on multiple occasions that the last chapter of his long career will be devoted to bringing this novel technology from the laboratory bench to the bedside of critically ill patents.
“It’s been forty-two years since I graduated from medical school, and now forty-eight years since I first learned about the photodissociation of carboxyhemoglobin. I couldn’t think of a better way to finish up my career and leave a lasting legacy in the history of medicine than by developing this new capability for treating patients with severe carbon monoxide poisoning.”
Mark S. Smyczynski, MD, PhD