Advisory Board
Rex Bionics has attracted enormous interest worldwide and is very proud to have the support and endorsement of a diverse, highly experienced and knowledgeable advisory board.
Montel Williams
Montel Williams began his career in the US Marine Corps. In 1975 he became the first black Marine selected to the Naval Academy Prep School in Newport, Rhode Island. He hosted The Montel Williams Show, a nationally syndicated talk show distributed by CBS Paramount Television, for 17 years, focusing on key social issues involving ordinary people coping with extraordinary circumstances.
Shortly after being diagnosed with MS in 1999, Williams established the Montel Williams MS Foundation to further the scientific study of MS and educate the public. The MWMSF has granted over $1.5 million dollars to research and has supported a study which discovered an MS gene. In January 2006, Williams became the national spokesman for the Partnership for Prescription Assistance, a program that has matched over 6 million Americans to public and private patient assistance programs providing them with more than $13 billion dollars of free or nearly free prescriptions. Battling Multiple Sclerosis daily, Williams has built the Living Well with Montel brand, focused on products that can help consumers live better physically, emotionally, financially and spiritually.
Professor Michael Thorner
Professor Michael Thorner is Professor of Internal Medicine at University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Master of the American College of Physicians, Fellow of Royal College of Physicians, member, Association of American Physicians, American Society of Clinical Investigation and American Clinical and Climatological Association.
Dr Thorner received his M.B.B.S, and D.Sc from the University of London and his endocrine training at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. He has received many prestigious awards including Edwin B. Astwood Award, Endocrine Society, GCRC Program Seventh Annual Award for Excellence in Clinical Research (NIH), Theodore E. Woodward Award-American Clinical and Climatological Association, American College of Physicians John Phillips Memorial Award, Endocrine Society Distinguished Physician Award, Dale Medal, Society for Endocrinology. His research has been supported by multiple grants from NIH. Professor Thorner has been a wheelchair user for 17 years following spinal cord injury from an accident.
Frank Gardner OBE
Frank Gardner is the BBC's award-winning fulltime Security Correspondent, reporting for TV, radio and online on issues of both UK and international security. In 2004 he was shot six times at close range by Al-Qaeda gunmen while filming in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia but survived with major injuries.
He is an Arabist with a degree in Arabic & Islamic Studies from Exeter University and he worked all over the Gulf before becoming the BBC's Middle East Correspondent in Cairo. He has reported firsthand on terrorism and security from around the Middle East, notably Saudi Arabia and Yemen, as well as Afghanistan, Pakistan, the US, Guantanamo Bay and the Horn of Africa. He has given evidence to various UK Parliamentary Committees on the conduct of the War on Terrorism.
He was awarded the OBE by HM The Queen in 2005 for services to journalism, awarded Honorary Doctorates of Laws by Nottingham, Staffordshire, Exeter, East Anglia and Open Universities, the McWhirter Award for Bravery, Spain's El Mundo Prize for International Journalism, the Zayed Medal for Journalism, the AMI Ability Media International award and voted Person of the Year by the UK Press Gazette. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and his Sunday Times bestseller 'Blood and Sand', describing his 25 years of Middle Eastern experiences, was published by Transworld in 2006. His new book, Far Horizons, about unusual journeys to unusual places, was published in paperback in June 2010.