Dr. William E. “Billy” Cohn is a Vice President for Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Companies and the Executive Director of the Center for Device Innovation at the Texas Medical Center in Houston. In addition, he is a tenured Professor of Surgery in the Department of Cardiac Transplantation and Mechanical Circulatory Assist at Baylor College of Medicine and an Adjunct Professor of Bioengineering at both Rice University and the University of Houston. 

Dr. Cohn has a passion for medical device development and has more than 150 U.S. patents granted or pending for his medical device innovations that have provided the core technology for eight venture-backed medical start-ups, four of which have been acquired by large med-tech companies.

Prior to joining Johnson & Johnson, Dr. Cohn was the Director of the legendary Cullen Cardiovascular Research Laboratory at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston where he was, and continues to be,  intimately involved in the development of the continuous-flow, totally implantable, artificial heart.  In 2011, Dr. Cohn and Dr. O. H. Frazier successfully implanted the first pulseless total heart replacement device in a human patient.