Rebecca M. Bergman is an American chemical engineer and the 17th President of

Gustavus Adolphus College Gustavus Adolphus College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in St. Peter, Minnesota. It was founded in 1862 by Swedish Americans led by Eric Norelius and is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Gustavus gets its nam ...

St. Peter, Minnesota St. Peter is a city in Nicollet County, Minnesota, United States. It is 10 miles north of the Mankato – North Mankato metropolitan area. The population was 12,066 at the 2020 census. St. Peter is the county seat of Nicollet County and home ...

. She began her term in July 2014, and is the first woman to serve as President of the college, which was founded in 1862. Before her presidency, she was a senior executive at

Medtronic Medtronic plc is an American medical device company. The company's operational and executive headquarters are in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and its legal headquarters are in Ireland due to its acquisition of Irish-based Covidien in 2015. While it ...

, and served on the college's Board of Trustees from 2007 to 2014.

Medtronic career

Bergman received a

B.S. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...

in chemical engineering from Princeton University, and undertook graduate studies in chemical engineering and material science from the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

. Bergman spent 26 years at Medtronic, Inc., from 1988 to 2014, including 14 as a senior executive. Her most recent position was Vice President of Research, Technology, and Therapy Delivery Systems for the company’s Cardiac Rhythm Disease Management (CRDM) business, where she led a research and development team of scientists and engineers. She previously served as Vice President, CRDM New Therapies & Diagnostics as well as Vice President, Corporate Science and Technology, where she directed

biomaterials A biomaterial is a substance that has been engineered to interact with biological systems for a medical purpose, either a therapeutic (treat, augment, repair, or replace a tissue function of the body) or a diagnostic one. As a science, biomateria ...

and

biosciences This list of life sciences comprises the branches of science that involve the scientific study of life – such as microorganisms, plants, and animals including human beings. This science is one of the two major branches of natural science, ...

R&D, new therapy development, and information management initiatives.

Honors and Distinctions

Bergman was elected as a Fellow of the

American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) is a non-profit organization founded in 1991, and headquartered in Washington. It represents 50,000 medical and biomedical engineers, and academic institutions, private industry, ...

in 2001. She was also elected as a member into the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...

in 2010 for technical leadership in the development of interventional vascular devices and drug delivery systems. She serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Sigma-Aldrich, on the Board of Directors of The

Bakken Museum The Bakken is a science museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, founded in 1975 by Earl Bakken, the co-founder of Medtronic. The exhibits present a history and explanation of electricity and electromagnetism. Exhibits Approxima ...

, and on a number of academic advisory boards. She previously served on the National Advisory Council of the

National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), founded at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2000, is located in Bethesda, Maryland. It is one of 27 institutes and centers that are part of NIH, an agency of the U ...

of the

National Institute of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late 1 ...

and the

St. Catherine University St. Catherine University (St. Kate's) is a private Catholic university in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It was established as one of the first institutions of higher learning specifically for women in the Midwest and was known as the College of St. C ...

Board of Trustees.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bergman, Rebecca M. Living people Heads of universities and colleges in the United States Princeton University alumni University of Minnesota alumni Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering Year of birth missing (living people)