About | Person First Technol

Meet the Leadership Team

The leadership team at Person First Technology, LLC has been collaborating for more than 15 years to develop and test technologies that support people living with dementia and their care partners.

Co-Chief Executive Officer

Ellen Brown, EdD, MS, RN, FAAN

Dr. Ellen Brown is Professor within the Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Florida International University (FIU). She is also the Erica Wertheim Zohar Chair in Community Mental Health. Together, Nicole and Ellen lead a team of researchers in Florida and Alabama to develop and test technologies that support people with dementia and their families. Ellen has a long-standing history of research that supports emotional support, choice, and person-hood of older adults.

Co-Chief Executive Officer

Nicole Ruggiano, PhD, MSW

Dr. Nicole Ruggiano is Professor and Associate Dean of Research for the School of Social Work at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. She is also an affiliated scientist of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Ruggiano is a geriatric medical social worker by training and has provided leadership for multiple research teams that develop and test technologies that support people living with dementia and their families. Previously, Dr. Ruggiano has been selected as a John A. Hartford Foundation Geriatric Social Work Scholar and an American Political Science Association Congressional Health and Aging Policy Fellow.

Chief Technology Officer

Peter Clarke, PhD

Dr. Peter Clarke is Associate Professor within the Knight Foundation School of Computer Science and Engineering at FIU. Peter plays a leadership role for the computer science team members for the Care Heroes Project. His areas of expertise include software testing, software metrics, model-driven software development, domain-specific modeling languages and computer science education.

Executive Director of Operations

Bryan Ford, PhD, MSW

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Meet the Clinical Team.

PFT has been successful by combining software engineering with expertise in nursing, social work, medicine, physical therapy, and speech language pathology. Our clinical experts play a vital role in advancing PFT's goal of developing technologies that have practical relevance in clinical and home-based settings.

Dr. Mariateresa Muñoz,

Speech Language Pathology Expert

Dr. Lisa Roberts

Physical Therapy Expert and Experienced Caregiver

Dr. Vicky Framil Suarez

Clinical Nursing Expert

Dr. Vicky Framil Suarez is a board certified Adult Nurse Practitioner with over 15 years of experience working with adults and the elderly in the primary care, long term care and home care settings. Additionally, she works as a full-time professor of Nursing in the Graduate Nursing Department at FIU Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing and Health Sciences. She has been a working with the team since 2019.

Dr. Lisa Roberts is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychical Therapy at the Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing and Health Sciences. She has over 30 years of clinical experience across multiple practice settings with a specialty area in geriatric physical therapy. As a strong patient advocate, she has been passionate about the prevention of medical errors and has been lecturing on this topic since 2007.Dr. Roberts is a strong advocate for comprehensive perspective about patient health and safety to reduce medical malpractice. Dr. Roberts has been presenting on Medical Errors Preventions for several years at the local and State level. For the Florida Physical Therapy Association, Dr. Roberts has developed and provided continuing educational training opportunities for physical therapists worldwide on a variety of topics including patient safety.

Meet our Advisory Board.

Our advisory board includes expert in medicine, software engineering, and IT security.

Dr. Marc Agronin

Miami Jewish Health,

Miami, FL

Dr. Vagelis Hristidis

University of California at Riverside

Kevin Lothridge

Florida International University

Miami, FL

Kelley Mitchell

Assisted Living Association of Alabama | Hoover, AL

Vagelis Christidis, UCR Professor of Computer Science, is an expert on the intersection of Databases, Information Retrieval and AI, with emphasis on healthcare data and applications. His work on indexing, searching and exploring complex interconnected data such as health and social has received more than 8,000 citations according to Google Scholar. His key achievements include the NSF CAREER award, a Google Research Award, an IBM Scalable Data Analytics for A Smarter Planet Innovation Award, the FIU SCIS Excellence in Research Award (twice), the FIU University Faculty Award, the Kauffmann Entrepreneurship Award, and a Samsung GRO award. His work on correlating Twitter and financial data was featured by mainstream media such as The New York Times, Forbes and Yahoo!. In 2016, Christidis founded SmartBot360, a healthcare conversational AI company, which was acquired by KLaunch in 2023.

Dr. Marc E. Agronin is a board-certified and licensed geriatric psychiatrist in the state of Florida and a nationally recognized expert on Alzheimer's disease. He is the Chief Medical Officer, Frank C. and Lynn Scaduto MIND Institute and Behavioral Health, Miami Jewish Health. The MIND Institute is a state-designated memory disorder clinic (MDC) that specializes in neurocognitive disorders including Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Agronin is the author of several books and has published essays in the New York Times and Scientific American Mind and writes regularly on aging and retirement issues for the Wall Street Journal. Dr. Agronin and Dr. Brown (PI) have collaborated on multiple projects over the past 10-15 years.

Kevin Lothrage is the Deputy Executive Director of the Global Forensic and Justice Center, part of the School of Integrated Science and Humanity at Florida International University. Mr. Lothridge is an accomplished forensic scientist and business leader with 30 years of experience in the international forensics industry. He served as CEO and Executive Director of the National Forensic Science Technology Center (NFSTC) from 2006-2020. Prior to joining NFSTC, he served as chief forensic chemist and laboratory director for the Pinellas County (FL) Sheriff’s Department and the Pinellas County Forensics Laboratory.

Kelley Mitchell is the Executive Director of the Assisted Living Association of Alabama (ALAA), which is an advocacy organization that promotes excellence and dignity in assisted living care across the state of Alabama. As a membership-based organization they have ALAA has more than 300 affiliate assisted living facilities statewide. Ms. Mitchell has expertise in the assisted living facility industry, including issues related to regulation, funding structure, service delivery, and business practices.