As an engineer-in-residence at Fogarty Innovation, Jesus Magaña does it all. He helps fledgling companies turn concepts into products, from early brainstorming and sketches through prototyping, testing, and manufacturing devices for clinical trials. While his deepest expertise is in designing and building catheters, he is regularly called in to problem-solve across the R&D and manufacturing continuum.
He’s also a generous and patient teacher, able to make even the most non-engineering-oriented entrepreneur feel at home working in the lab or operating equipment in Fogarty’s machine and model shops.
Helping Companies
One of the Fogarty companies-in-development Magaña has worked with most closely is Ryme Medical, which uses Targeted Lung Denervation to help patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease breathe easier. When Ryme first arrived at Fogarty, Magaña partnered with fellow engineer-in-residence Bernie Andreas and company founder Paul Andreotti to create the earliest prototypes of a catheter that incorporates electrical components and thermal control elements to deliver cryoblation therapy. As the company grew and hired R&D engineers, Magaña stayed involved, working side-by-side with the team.
“Ryme was one of the first projects we worked on together,” said Andreas. “Jesus is incredibly skilled at working with a startup team to understand what the product must do—where in the body it needs to go, what must be visible under direct or indirect visualization, whether the device needs to curve or torque in specific ways—and then designing a system tailored to the indication.”
For another company, Materna Medical, Magaña streamlined product assembly by designing fixtures—precision tools that hold components securely in place to support efficient, repeatable manufacturing. Most recently, he has been collaborating with Selera and Corveus Medical, both participants in Fogarty’s Company Accelerator Program working on new approaches to treat congestive heart failure.
A positive force
Magaña calls the lab his “happy place,” and it shows.
“His positive attitude is infectious,” reported Andreas. “He will support anyone on any project to the best of his ability and does it in a way that fosters a positive work environment. He gets people excited about the work they are doing and makes them eager to learn.”
Daniel Massana, a Stanford postdoc who participated in Fogarty’s Invention Accelerator Program (IAP), experienced Magaña’s enthusiasm firsthand while working on a technology to improve the removal of kidney stone fragments.
“When our team joined the IAP, we had a very rough prototype,” Masanna recalled. “It was most definitely not a medical device.” Magaña and Andreas sat down with Masanna, who has a PhD in chemistry but no engineering background, and “bombarded him with ideas,” helping him work through a design that accounted for complex inputs—like delivering two liquids in a very tight space.
“Jesus showed me every single step in building the catheters and taught me good engineering practices,” said Masanna. “I feel like he and Bernie significantly advanced my ability to contribute.”
Now that the project is transitioning out of Stanford to become a medtech startup, Masanna is grateful for the continued access to the Fogarty engineers. “I feel so lucky that we’re a visiting company and I can still work with Jesus once or twice a month,” he said. “He makes learning fun.”
Engineering disciples aren’t the only ones who benefit from Magaña’s cheer. “His sense of humor makes everyone at Fogarty happy to work with him,” said Mike Regan, Fogarty chief innovation officer. “His jokes are corny, but he makes us laugh and feel good. He is always smiling and just lifts the mood wherever he goes.”
A rough start
Magaña’s unwavering positivity is even more remarkable given his early life challenges. His mother passed away from cancer when he was ten, and his father, struggling with alcoholism, couldn’t maintain their home. The family moved from Mexico to live with relatives in San Rafael, California. Despite relocating multiple times to live with different relatives, the burden of caring for six kids was too much and the family separated, with Magaña and a younger brother returning to Mexico with their dad.
Unable to afford a real home, they built a shelter out of palm trees in the mountains. “My aunts helped us make a chimney out of clay, and two little burners – one to make tortillas, and one to cook or boil water for tea made of lemon or lime leaves,” Magaña recalled.
Every morning, he and his brother woke up early to rotate tasks – one grinding corn for tortillas, the other cooking. Then they would head outside in the dark to care for their crops, cleaning the soil under the corn stalks with their hands to keep away weeds and pests.
Magaña calls this period—which lasted three or four years—the most difficult in his life. Their father’s alcoholism worsened, there was no electricity nor running water, and the brothers did not attend school. “We worked for people to make a little money, and used it for staples like sugar, beans, tomatoes and onions,” he recalled. “I became good at sewing from constantly patching my pants. To this day, I do all the sewing for my wife and kids,” he grinned.
A new path
At 18, Magaña borrowed money and moved back to the US. He found a job at a produce store and later worked at a pathology lab, where he learned to prepare tissue samples. “You had to be really careful because some of the samples were infectious and we were using sharp scalpel blades and needles,” he recalled. Despite the early hours and inherent risks, it was “an honest job,” that paid enough for him to send money to help bring his younger brother to the U.S.
His boss at the lab, Don, left a lasting impression. “He was always challenging me, giving me extra work,” Magaña said. “At the time it was hard, but I realized he did it because he wanted me to learn and grow.”
In 1997, he got married and moved to Redwood City to be closer to his wife’s family. He worked briefly in construction, then joined HeartPort as an assembler. He quickly stood out, volunteering to stay after hours to help the engineers and learn. He also developed improvements that made parts of the assembly process simpler and more efficient.
Soon after, Magaña was promoted into R&D—a move he describes as life-changing. “R&D is much more creative than assembly,” he said. “It kept me up at night because I was collaborating with skilled engineers who were fabricating and designing, and I wanted to be sure I was contributing and that they were happy with my work.”
Committed to a future in medtech R&D, Magaña went on to R&D roles at Ventrica (where he met Fogarty chief development officer Dom Filloux), Angiotech Biomaterials, Ensure Medical, Barosense, Abbott Vascular, nVision (a Fogarty alumnus company), Boston Scientific, and ultimately, Fogarty Innovation.
Lessons that last
Magaña’s early experiences fueled life lessons about learning and attitude that shape him to this day. ”Going through hard times doesn’t mean that you should feel unlucky, or think, “why me?” he said. “Everything happens for a reason—you just have to figure it out.”
“I’m grateful for all the aunts and uncles who helped me and treated me as their own, and I’m even grateful to the people who didn’t help, because there’s also a lesson to be learned from that,” he continued. “Those experiences helped me survive and made me who I am today.”
At Fogarty, Magaña tries to teach young innovators that the work is hard but rewarding, and that even when things don’t go right, there is still an opportunity to learn.
“At the end of the day it’s all about attitude,” he said. “Your attitude opens doors and creates opportunities. There is always someone who can teach you new things but you have to be open to being challenged and willing to learn.”
It helps to have a ready smile, too, something Magaña brings to every encounter—despite, or perhaps because of, all he’s overcome.