40 under 40 — Jack Schorsch

Beta Tau, 2002 — Recognized in: 2020

Jack Schorsch (BT ’02) is the founder and CEO at IMSystems, based in Delft The Netherlands.

Jack never thought that he would be one to join a fraternity. He now knows that he was fortunate to be part of the large pledge class that joined a faltering Beta Tau chapter in 1999. I also met one of the first young people who was a real leader – the computer science skateboarder who when on to become chapter president. He learned something from that, and it has become one of his maxims in life. “Always be in a place where there is someone who is better than you” – this can apply in any avenue of life, and he has used it to great effect in his life & career.

“Wherever you are, you should look around and find the person who is amazing at what they do and learn from them. Then use your talents to support the goals. You don’t need to be the smartest guy in the room – you’ll move faster if you have great people to work with.”

There are two particular things in his professional life that he is most proud – the first came after receiving his master’s degree in 2007. He was leading part of a team which was building a cybernetic prosthetic limb system for disabled veterans. It was the largest bionics project ever attempted in the world – and he was coordinating a team on two continents and four countries. His role there was to bring a brain-machine implant from the lab bench to human trials. The implant was successfully used in a first-in-man clinical trial in 2011.

He is also immensely proud of his startup, IMSystems – of course in the technology they develop, but more so in the kind of people that that he has working for him. He still applies that principal of working with great people.

“I try to go out of my way to hire engineers that are smarter than me – I get to learn from them and I get to use my talents to make it easier for them to excel. Leslie Groves isn’t as well known, but he is the reason that Oppenheimer was so successful”

Jack received his bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from Tulane University in 2002. While at Tulane, he served as an officer of Beta Tau for three years, and had the pleasure of seeing five members of the 2018 class of the 40-under-40 pledge. He earned his Master’s in Medical Device Design from the University of Southern California in 2007. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands in parallel with running his startup, IMSystems, a robotics. He is married to Caroline Kappers who he met while at Tulane. They have two children, Isabella & Jack.