Casana is a Rochester, New York digital-health company that builds the Smart Seat (originally the Heart Seat), a toilet-seat replacement that passively measures vital signs - heart rate, heart rate variability, blood oxygen, respiration rate and blood pressure insights - while a person simply sits, with no wearables, charging or behavior change required. Spun out of research done by founder Nicholas Conn during his PhD at the Rochester Institute of Technology, the company earned FDA 510(k) clearance in 2023 and launched a consumer version of the seat in July 2026.
Steve Hoover is the CEO of Impossible Objects, the Northbrook, Illinois company commercializing CBAM (composite-based additive manufacturing), a from-the-ground-up 3D printing process that bonds carbon fiber and other composites into parts that are stronger, lighter and more heat-tolerant than conventional prints. A mechanical engineer with a Carnegie Mellon doctorate, he spent roughly two decades at Xerox, rising to corporate CTO and running PARC as CEO, before a stint leading RIT's Global Cybersecurity Institute and co-founding the art-recognition startup Artify.ai. He took the Impossible Objects helm in March 2023 to push composite 3D printing from prototypes into high-volume manufacturing.