2026 Hall of Fame Inductees

Afshin Mohebbi is an investor and senior advisor with TPG Capital since 2003, focusing on technology and telecommunications investments worldwide. Mohebbi is currently a board member of Digital Realty Trust, a Fortune 500 company where he is chairman of the Audit Committee. Other board memberships include DirecTV, Climavision, Miratech and Newfold Digital. Previous board memberships include, KPMG/ BearingPoint, Dish Networks, Astound Broadband, Windriver, Alltel Wireless, Apollo Towers, Wharf Telecom and Hanaro Telecom.

 

From 1999-2003, Mohebbi was president and chief operating officer of Qwest Communications International, a Fortune 100 company with revenues of $20B, 25 million customers and 72,000 employees. He had day-to-day responsibility for operations of the company, and during his tenure, he co-chaired integration with U.S. WEST, one of the largest mergers in the U.S. telecom industry. At 36, he also became the youngest ever president of a major telecom company.

From 1998 until June 1999, he was president and managing director of United Kingdom Markets for British Telecom’s largest operating division with $18B of revenue and more than 48,000 employees. Earlier, Mohebbi was president and managing director of BT Business division, with responsibility for BT’s global enterprise customers, in addition to its yellow pages, outsourcing and Internet/multimedia subsidiaries. He Joined BT in 1997 as a senior marketing executive.

Mohebbi began his career in 1983 with Pacific Bell Telephone Company in California, where he held assignments in engineering, operations, regulatory, sales and marketing. His last position with Pacific Bell was vice president of business markets.

In 2000, Mohebbi was selected as one of 100 Global Leaders of Tomorrow by World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In 2002, he was appointed by Colorado Governor Owens as a trustee of the Colorado Institute of Technology. In 2025, he was selected by Wall Street Journal as one of the top 50 public company directors in the U.S.

In addition to his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, Mohebbi holds an MBA from UC Irvine. He resides in Northern California.

Ramin Mousavi is a dynamic and seasoned health care executive, currently serving as the president, CEO and a member of the Board of Directors at CathWorks, an innovative global medical device company dedicated to improving patient care. He has an outstanding history of building high-performing organizations and achieving exceptional results in the medical device and high-tech industries — from early development to global commercialization of breakthrough and transformational innovations.

 

Mousavi's career spans various leadership roles across multiple industries. Prior to his tenure at CathWorks, he led the patient monitoring and digital health portfolio at Baxter International. He also held significant positions at Edwards Lifesciences, Panasonic Avionics and Rockwell Collins, gaining extensive experience in general management, marketing, strategy, product development and commercialization.

In addition to his bachelor’s degree, Mousavi earned an MBA from the UC Irvine Paul Merage School of Business. He completed a Healthcare Executive Leadership program for Business Innovation in Global Healthcare from Harvard Business School. An active UCI alumnus, Mousavi has contributed to his alma mater by serving as chair of the Dean’s Leadership Circle at the Merage School, and he has been instrumental in expanding the DLC Grant Initiative, supporting students, faculty and the local business community. He is currently the vice-chair of the Dean’s Advisory Board. In recognition of his professional achievements and commitment to education, Mousavi was honored as the 2023 Distinguished Commencement Speaker at the UCI Merage School.

Mousavi is an active philanthropist and has held board of directors’ positions at local nonprofits, including the Council on Aging Southern California and the American Heart Association.

Mousavi is recognized throughout his career as a star in Southern California and the Global MedTech community and has been honored with many awards, including the 40 Under 40, Excellence in Healthcare, Entrepreneur of the Year by the Greater Irvine Chamber of Commerce, and the Innovator of Year and the Excellence in Entrepreneurship by Orange County Business Journal. Under his leadership, CathWorks has been awarded the Outstanding Emerging Technology Company and the Deal of The Year Winner by OCTANE.

Jonathan Posner is the Richard and Victoria Harrington Professor for Engineering Innovation in Health and a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington. He is also an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Family Medicine.

 

Posner’s research is primarily focused on the development of point-of-care diagnostics for infectious diseases (HIV, HCV) for use in low- and middle-income countries, precision medicine drug level measurements, and a wide range of medical devices. His previous areas of eclectic research include combustion diagnostics, electrokinetic fluid transport in microdevices, artificial nanomotors, the transport and toxicity of synthetic nanoparticles, fluidic fuel cells, and development of tactile skin for robotics.

Posner founded and served as director (2013-2024) of the Engineering Innovation in Health program, an interdisciplinary academic program between the UW’s College of Engineering, School of Medicine, and Burke Center for Entrepreneurship that develops technical solutions to pressing unmet health needs. He led a team that developed and subsequently sold millions of cleaner burning biomass cookstoves for East Africa that are twice as efficient and an order of magnitude cleaner than traditional three-stone fires that are currently in use.

He has 27 patents and patent applications and has founded two companies: VICIS focused on a football helmet that reduces the risk of concussion (football’s safest helmet for the last eight years), and Phoresa focused on point-of-care diagnostics. Posner is a recipient of the UW School of Medicine 2016 Inventor of the Year Award, the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Posner earned a master’s degree (1998) from the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics in Belgium. The institute recognized Posner for his excellence in experimental research.