Women Scientists Turned Entrepreneurs

There are hundreds of innovations and discoveries born in the field of science and engineering every year in universities around the world.  However, only a few of them are able to make it into commercial ventures. Today, we will be looking into women who turned their groundbreaking research into successful businesses.

1) Nina Tandon

Nina Tandon is a biomedical engineer and co founded the company Epibone.  The main aim of the Company is to develop technology to develop bone reconstruction solution through stem cells.  The Company creates bone tissues from a patient’s stem cells and grows them in vitro for use in bone grafts. Tandon serves as the CEO of Epibone and is also an adjunct professor of electrical engineering at the Cooper Union in New York.  Tandon was named a TED Fellow in 2011 and a senior TED Fellow in 2012.  In 2013, she received an award at the Marie Claire’s Women on Top Awards.

2) Anuradha Acharya

Anuradha Acharya is the founder and CEO of Mapmygenome, a company which focuses on preventive healthcare options through genome sequencing.  She also founded another company called Ocimum Biosolutions, a genomics outsourcing company for discovery, development and diagnostics. In 2015, Mapmygenome made news for raising funds worth $ 1.1 million from a group of investors.  Acharya was awarded the Entrepreneur of the Year award by the magazine Biospectrum in 2008.  Her name was included in the 2018 W-power trailblazers by Forbes.

3) Sinead O’Sullivan

An aerospace engineer, Sinead O’Sullivan specialises in space technology and is currently  the CEO of Avioptix, a company which captures, stores and analyzes real time data from satellites, drones and ground robotics.  Her Company created the first ever platform to crowdsource drone data. Avioptix tailors their insights to the needs of their clients, supporting agriculture, oil and gas, insurance and NGOs.

4) Rana el Kaliouby

Rana el Kaliouby is a computer scientist and the co founder and CEO of Affectivia.  Affectivia is an emotion measurement technology company which develops software to recognize human emotions based on facial expressions and physiological responses.  As a research scientist at MIT, her initial focus was on ways to improve human-computer interaction, but she quickly realised the possibility of using the technology to improve human to human interaction, especially for those affected by autism.  She was inducted into the Women in Engineering Hall of Fame and was mentioned in Forbes’ America’s Top 50 Women in Tech 2018.

These women serve as perfect examples and inspiration for women working in the STEM field to grow their research into a business empire.  If we missed mentioning any such women scientists who turned into entrepreneurs, comment and let us know.