Max Hodak has hired the ultrasound guy.
Nevada Sanchez, co-founder of Butterfly Network (NYSE: BFLY) and the engineer who led the ultrasound-on-a-chip programme from prototype to a global clinical device, joined Science Corporation as Executive Vice President of Engineering on 29 July. He reports directly to Hodak, and his brief covers engineering leadership across the entire organisation. That is PRIMA the retinal implant, Biohybrid the next-generation neural interface, Vessel the organ-perfusion programme, and the Science Foundry, the company’s in-house MEMS fabrication line.
The announcement landed exactly one week after the 22 July CE mark for PRIMA, and reads as scaling infrastructure being installed for the commercial phase Science is now entering.
Who Sanchez is
Sanchez co-founded Butterfly Network in 2011, where he conceived and led the development of the world’s first ultrasound system on a chip, the Butterfly iQ. He held the Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer role at the company most recently, and left, per the Science release, recently.
His formal training is MIT. Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science plus a Bachelor’s in Mathematics with a Physics minor in 2010, Master’s in EECS in 2011. He was named a Hertz Fellow (deferred the PhD to launch Butterfly), took the Henry Ford II Scholar Award as top student in MIT’s engineering school, made Forbes 30 Under 30 Science in 2015, and holds 55 granted patents on record with the Hertz Foundation.
The reason this profile matters for what Science is doing next: Sanchez’s Butterfly track record is specifically about compressing complex analog-plus-digital hardware onto silicon at semiconductor scale, then getting the resulting device deployed globally. Butterfly iQ went from prototype to a handheld probe used by clinicians across international markets. Sanchez’s profile is exactly what companies hire when moving from clinical-trial hardware into commercial manufacturing.
What the role actually covers
Science’s own press release frames the role as “engineering leadership across the organization.” Reading the release literally, Sanchez has PRIMA (photovoltaic retinal implant, now CE marked), Biohybrid (the company’s next-generation implantable neural interface, not yet in clinical trials), Vessel (organ perfusion for long-term organ support), and the Science Foundry (in-house MEMS fabrication for the entire pipeline).
The release does not name a predecessor and does not call the role newly created or a replacement. The consolidation of all engineering under a single EVP a week after CE mark reads as the internal restructuring you do when you have three parallel hardware programmes at different maturity stages and one of them just entered commercial supply.
Max Hodak in the release: “We are dedicated to solving some of medicine’s hardest problems through neural engineering. This requires constant innovation at scale and the best minds working together. Nevada has spent the past fifteen years creating an entirely new sensing technology at Butterfly and scaling it to a product used by clinicians globally to reveal what was previously invisible. We are thrilled he’s joining us.”
Sanchez in the release: “Science is working on some of the most interesting and consequential engineering problems in medicine: restoring vision with retinal implants, building the next generation of implantable neural interfaces, and developing technologies for long-term organ support. I have tremendous respect for what Max and the Science team have already accomplished, and I look forward to what we can accomplish together, which will change lives around the world.”
PRIMA commercial launch: Germany first, this fall
The commercial ramp is running in parallel. Citeline Medtech Insight reported on 29 July that PRIMA’s first commercial implants are expected in Germany and the UK “this fall,” with Germany taking the lead. Science’s 22 July CE mark press release said commercial implants would follow “soon in Germany,” without naming the UK. Country-specific reimbursement applications and clinical site activations are running “across Europe,” in the company’s phrasing.
Frank Holz, MD, Chair of Ophthalmology at University Hospital Bonn, was the lead investigator on the PRIMA Trial and is the KOL anchor for the Germany-first rollout. Bonn is one of the largest ophthalmology centres in Germany and is positioned to be the first commercial site once statutory-health-insurance reimbursement lands.
The narrower launch geography compared to the CE mark’s 30-country footprint is normal for a device requiring country-by-country reimbursement decisions and site training. Germany and the UK have the largest ophthalmology capacity in Europe and the most-established payer pathways for high-cost implantable devices.
The trial results underpinning the launch: 38 implanted patients across 17 sites in five countries, 84 percent regained the ability to read letters, numbers and words, 80 percent gained at least logMAR 0.2 of vision on the ETDRS chart, mean improvement of 25.5 ETDRS letters at 12 months. Published in NEJM. First BCI device to receive CE marking for form vision restoration, distinct from Argus II’s phosphene-only vision from Second Sight (CE mark 2011, production discontinued 2019, company wound down through 2022 merger with Nano Precision Medical).
What else is running
Science’s 22 July release stated that an FDA process for PRIMA is also underway, without naming the specific pathway. Science closed a $230 million Series C alongside the CE mark, bringing total capital raised to approximately $490 million. The company remains headquartered in Alameda, California. Alan Mardinly holds the Chief Scientific Officer role as co-founder. Hodak founded Science after leaving Neuralink in 2021.
What to watch
Two threads matter over the next three months.
First, the actual first commercial PRIMA implant in Germany. Payer coverage decisions from Germany’s statutory-health-insurance system are the gating item. If the first implants happen this fall as Citeline reports, that will be the first commercial revenue event for a Science product, and it will validate the four-and-a-half-year path from company founding to commercial launch.
Second, whether Sanchez’s arrival signals a broader engineering hiring wave. The role scope covers three hardware programmes and a fabrication line. Consolidating that under a single EVP with a Butterfly-scale scaling background suggests headcount growth is planned across the engineering organisation. Watch for named engineering-VP-level hires in Biohybrid, Vessel, and Foundry over the next quarter.
The Science Corp position in the broader BCI cohort has now moved into commercial-supply territory alongside Neuracle, which issued the world’s first commercial invasive BCI prescription in Shanghai on 13 July. Neuracle is shipping to paying patients today. Science holds regulatory approval and is preparing for first commercial implants in Germany this fall. Two BCI operators now hold approved product for commercial supply in 2026. The strategic implication for the cohort behind them, Neuralink, Paradromics, Precision, Synchron, and Motif, is that commercial validation of the category has arrived. What is unclear is which of those follows Science and Neuracle into commercial supply next.