Sau Lan Staats, PhD
The Founder of SimBalance, Inc., Sau Lan Staats, PhD, is no stranger to how debilitating and life-damaging Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV) can be. She has suffered from it since she was just out of her teens. Through the years she underwent numerous tests commonly prescribed for vertigo diagnosis such as caloric, eye-movement, audiometry, CAT scans, MRI, etc. without any clear diagnosis. About 10 years ago, she received the first head maneuver treatment at her doctor’s office, which unfortunately, was not effective, and neither was the subsequent self-administered head maneuver BPPV exercises done at home and at work. For two weeks, she reclined on a mat and positioned her head at various angles as best she could according to the doctor’s instructions for 20 minute three times a day. Still dizzy after the disruptive and extremely uncomfortable exercise sessions, she came up with the idea of supporting her head at an inclined angle and let the natural tossing and turning during the night’s sleep do the head maneuver exercises for her. The positional vertigo pillow that she perfected over the next several months has enabled her to live her life free of positional vertigo symptoms for over 10 years. The US patent on the pillow and the process of “automated’, i.e., effortless on the part of the user, head maneuver exercise with the pillow was issued in 2018 (US Pat. No. 9937092). It has been made available to sufferers of BPPV worldwide as the SimBalance System.
Sau Lan Staats is an entrepreneur and research scientist in the fields of nanotechnology and tools for biomedical research. She received her PhD in Physical Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked for many years as a research scientist at AT&T Bell Laboratories and then at Du Pont. She has published over 30 research articles in leading scientific journals and has been issued 14 US and international patents. SimBalance, Inc. is her second business venture.
SimBalance, Inc. is located in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, USA. All parts of the SimBalance pillows are sourced and made in the USA.
Please let us know via the Contact us page your experience in using the SimBalance pillows, and we promise that we will make the SimBalance System even more effective and comfortable based on your feedback.
