• Afshin Abedi, PhD, has been appointed vice president of CardioMag Imaging (Schenectady, New York), responsible for the company's clinical and regulatory activities. CardioMag makes cardiac diagnostic devices called MagnetoCardioGraphs, which record the electrical activity of the heart using highly sensitive superconducting sensors.

• Dr. Hakon Hakonarson, who has served in various positions at deCode genetics (Reykjavik, Iceland) over the past eight years, most recently as vice president of business development, is leaving the company to pursue other interests. Tomas Sigurdsson, deCode's vice president, treasury and new alliances, will assume responsibility for the company's business development. deCode is applying human genetics to develop drugs for common diseases.

• Eapen Chacko will join MedicalCV (Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota) as vice president, finance and CFO, effective June 21. Chacko was previously CFO of Possis Medical. MedicalCV's core technology is the Atrilaze Surgical Ablation System for use in cardiac tissue ablation procedures in open-heart surgery.

• Douglas Batt has been appointed to the role of senior vice president and general counsel of Parexel International (Boston). Parexel is a biopharmaceutical outsourcing organization, providing a range of contract research, medical marketing and consulting services to the worldwide pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries.

• Kevin Gordon has been elected chairman of the board of directors of SSI Surgical Services (Orlando, Florida). Gordon is senior vice president, corporate development for Teleflex. He succeeds Forrest Whittaker, who recently resigned from the SSI board. SSI Surgical Services provides surgical support services to hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers throughout the U.S.

• Symphony Medical (Laguna Hills, California), a developer of new non-destructive biologic therapies to treat atrial fibrillation and other cardiac abnormalities, has named veteran medical technology executive Raymond Cohen CEO and a member of the board of directors. Cohen was for the past nine years the CEO of Cardiac Science, where he remains chairman of the board. Symphony Medical is a privately-held, venture-backed development stage company.