Harmon, Dr. Aaron

Dr. Aaron Harmon earned his Ph.D. from South Dakota State University in microbiology and is the Program Director for the Regulatory Science Master's program at Mount Marty University. He has over 10 years of experience in education in quality assurance, regulatory affairs, and medical product development, including his work for the University of South Dakota (USD). While working at USD, he co-founded QUIBIT, a quality assurance professionals’ network, which provided networking and education for 4 years to local industry professionals. During that time, he launched a podcast, Inside Out Quality (now Regulations Rx) which ran for 4 seasons with guests from around the world sharing stories on how quality and regulations (or the lack of) shaped history. This podcast has over five thousand downloads across fifty-five countries.

In addition to education, Aaron has 20 years of experience in industry between his career at Novartis Animal Health, Elanco Animal Health, and numerous start-up companies. Aaron led the quality and regulatory efforts for a medical diagnostics device company, Inanovate Inc., and helped navigate the path from R&D to successfully achieving FDA clearance for their diagnostic system. He continues to consult for the medical device industry.

Aaron’s current research interests focus on how regulations shape rural healthcare and how we improve regulatory oversight to expedite new innovations reaching market, while ensuring patient and consumer safety.