Julien Penders

Entrepreneur

Julien Penders is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at Bloom Technologies. Passionate entrepreneur in digital and mobile health, Julien is committed to the development of technologies that empower people with their own health, towards disease prevention and a healthier life. In the last 10 years, Julien has had experience heading an international team of 25 people through the development of innovative and creative product concepts that are currently being deployed on the market and shaping the future of health and wellness. 

Prior to founding Bloom, Julien was Program Director at imec where he led the wearable healthcare activities for North America. In this position, Julien was responsible for defining imec’s strategy for wearable healthcare in North America, exploring new business opportunities in the area of digital health, setting up research roadmaps and directing projects for key North American customers. Prior to joining imec USA, Julien was Program Manager at the Holst Centre / imec the Netherlands, where he led the activities on Body Area Networks and a team of 25 people. 

Julien has led wearable health projects for market leaders in both the medical and consumer spaces, covering all aspects of system design from IC to algorithms to system and clinical validation. A few notable examples include the development of a cardiac monitoring patch that was successfully taken to FDA, the development of low-power headsets for brain monitoring, and the development of the reference sensor module for Samsung’s Simband platform announced in 2014. He has (co-) authored over 60 papers and 7 patents in the field of wearable technologies and connected health. He has been a keynote or invited speakers at multiple public events and conferences, including TEDx and the Creativity World Forum. He was general co-chair for the Wireless Health conference in 2013 and 2014. He serves on the IEEE Technical Committee on Biomedical Health Informatics, and sits on the Program Committees for several international conferences. Julien was a 2004/2005 fellow of the Belgian American Educational Foundation. He holds a M.Sc. degree in Systems Engineering from University of Liege, Belgium (2004), and a M.Sc. degree in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University, MA (2006).