World IP Day 2023: Celebrating Inspiring Women Entrepreneurs and Innovators

On this World IP Day, let’s take a look at eight women entrepreneurs and innovators who, through ingenuity, creativity, and unwavering determination, inspire us all. 

These women are pushing the boundaries of what was once thought impossible and are blazing a trail for future generations of female innovators. What’s even more awe-inspiring is that many of these talented women have earned patents for their cutting-edge technologies that can potentially transform the world for the better, one invention at a time.

Therefore, without further ado, let’s see who they are. 

Inspiring Women Entrepreneurs and Innovators

Armed with an expansive list of professional degrees, Nina aimed to create entire human organs artificially. To achieve this, she did her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering with a part in cardiac tissue engineering, where she began creating tissue.  

Later in 2013, she founded EpiBone, the first company to generate bone tissue for skeletal reconstruction surgeries artificially.

In March 2023, the company received around $3.5 million in funding from New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) to facilitate relocating its business to establish 90 full-time job positions.

In addition to being a full-time entrepreneur and researcher, she is also the co-author of Super Cells: Building with Biology, a TED Senior Fellow, and an Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Cooper Union.

Awards and Patents

She has 3 patents and was named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company, a Crain’s 40 under 40 people who have succeeded in business before they turned 40, and a World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer.

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A pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, Rana caters her technology to nearly 25% of the Fortune 500. She started Affectiva after leaving MIT Media Lab, where she researched emotion recognition technology in mental health and autism. Her research and company aim to humanize AI that can pick up on even the subtlest facial expressions, which can be groundbreaking in various fields such as the automobile industry and care for people with special needs. 

She has completed her post-doc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And only recently authored a book- Girl Decoded– a memoir detailing her journey as a scientist aiming to bring out the human in technology through AI. 

Awards and Patents

Rana has a list of more than 60  patents to her credit, most of which have been granted. She was named by Forbes in their list of America’s Top 50 Women in Tech, and Fortune included her in their list of 40 under 40. She has also been chosen by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader and a  member of WEF’s Future Global Council on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence.

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A leader in the field of sustainable development, Gracy started off as a research and development engineer at Hewlett-Packard Development Company. Today, she is heading the Global R&D Next Generation Packing and Sustainability at The Coca-Cola Company as a principal scientist. Her work aims to progress significantly towards the Circular Economy and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Her interest in sustainable material innovations dates back to her graduate school days. She always wanted to study Chemical engineering, and her dream materialized when she completed her Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. As her career progressed, her work shifted to technology and innovation management. With an impressive educational background, Gracy also has an extensive list of skills, including innovation management, portfolio management, research and development, IP and marketing, and business strategy. 

Awards and Patents

Gracy has eight patents to her credit, seven of which are granted. This year she was invited to speak at Frost & Sullivan’s Innovation Workshop and Tour, sponsored by the Growth Innovation Leadership Council.

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Margaret Lumley established ChloBis Water intending to revolutionize water desalination by utilizing electrochemistry. Her method does not just extract salt from water but also simultaneously generates electricity.

She started researching a method to construct a prototype for a desalination battery that would be energy efficient and also help the world with the looming freshwater crisis by turning ocean water into drinkable water. Her research has been published in 10 publications, and she is moving fast toward achieving her goal.

Awards and Patents

Margaret published a patent in 2021 named aqueous energy storage systems with desalination capabilities in line with her company goals. She has also been awarded $256000 by the National Science Foundation for her work in Chlobis Water.

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The determination behind creating Occamz Razor was simple; Katharina had realized that Parkinson’s disease was not just incredibly complex but poorly understood. Therefore, she founded Occamz Razor, a biotechnology company that analyses and compiles every piece of data available on the internet regarding such brain diseases for better understanding. Her software also claims to present findings that humans might have missed to find newer avenues in tackling diseases.

Katharina has not only completed her Ph.D. in a record time of 2.5 years but is also the first ever person to complete it in stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at Stanford University. Her deep domain expertise has attracted funding of over $12 million from some prominent investors.

Awards and Patents

She has a patent to her name for discovering the progenitor cells that form the coronary arteries and the signal required for this differentiation event. Additionally, Volz recognized as a reliable speaker by UNESCO, was included in Forbes’ prestigious global list of young achievers, 30 Under 30, in 2017. Furthermore, she was accepted into the first cohort of the United Nations Nexus Accelerator program in 2020 and was named in MIT technology review’s top 35 under 35 innovators.

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In 2013, Patricia Scanlon unveiled her brainchild, SoapBox Labs, which leverages the power of artificial intelligence to create bespoke voice applications designed specifically for young users. Widely hailed as the “Siri for kids,” this innovative firm has been able to amass a staggering $3.6 million in funding, primarily through B2B sales.

Furthermore, SoapBox Labs has received a coveted EU H2020 SME Instrument grant worth $1.5 million to facilitate the development of voice-first literacy applications across multiple languages. 

An accomplished expert in AI, Patricia Scanlon is an esteemed advisor to TechIreland and a mentor at the Founder Institute. Prior to SoapBox Labs, she had been affiliated with Nokia’s research arm Bell Laboratories. Her illustrious academic career also includes research positions at esteemed institutions such as Columbia, IBM, and University College Dublin. Moreover, she also has been given the honor of being Ireland’s first AI ambassador, where she will demystify AI and promote its benefits.

Awards and Patents

Patricia has filed two patents following her company’s goal of detecting and processing audio signals of children into speech. Moreover, in October 2018, Forbes listed her as one of the top 50 Women in Tech in Europe and one of the top 50 Women in Tech Worldwide. She was also named a finalist for the EU Prize for women innovators.

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A pioneer in the field of robotics, Niamh aims to bring faster and more efficient technology to clean and disinfect hospitals and nursing homes. Her conquest to make this happen started at Trinity College, Dublin, where she won an AI student award in 2018. 

One of her first creations was Stevie, the social care robot designed to help out people in retirement communities, which was even featured on the cover of T.I.M.E. magazine.

Her current work involves developing an autonomous navigation robot, ‘Violet’. It uses UVC sterilization to significantly reduce the time needed to disinfect hospitals, allowing the hospital to cater to more patients in the same time frame. This innovative technology granted her company 3 million euros from the European Innovative Partnership.

Awards and Patents

Akara Robotics has filed for a Remotely or autonomously operable disinfection apparatus patent in lieu of Niamh’s vision. Additionally, Her AI research has earned her national accolades, and she was recently recognized by Silicon Republic as one of the “20 women doing captivating work in AI, machine learning, and data science.” She was acknowledged worldwide as one of the “50 women in robotics you should be familiar with in 2021” by Robohub. Niamh has also bagged the prestigious “The Rising Innovator Award” at the 2022 EU prize for women innovators. 

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Mandy worked as a distinguished engineer at IBM for 34 long years and won numerous accolades, such as the title of ‘IBM Master Innovator.’ At IBM, she spearheaded the Egeria project. This platform enables organizations to share data management and governance across the enterprise by offering open APIs, event formats, types, and integration logic. The open-source Egeria project is under her command even now that she has left IBM and started her venture -Pragmatic Data Research Ltd. This organization helps businesses who want to work on the Egeria Project, which she uses to improve her client’s businesses through a pragmatic approach to analytics and data governance.

Furthermore, she has been published in numerous publications and has also published a book- ‘Patterns of Information Management’ on design patterns.

Awards and Patents

Mandy has over 50 patents filed, and most of them are granted. She was featured in a book by BCS- Women in IT: Inspiring the next generation. And she was named in the Top 50 Influential Women in Engineering List 2016. She has also received Innovator of the Year at the Cisco Everywoman in Technology Awards. And the award for being the first woman to win a Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal.

Conclusion

While each of these women entrepreneurs is incredible, this list, by no means, is exhausted. As a leading innovation research and patent licensing firm, we are privy to many women who inspire us on a daily basis. But we are aware that we, too, can miss out sometimes. Therefore, if you believe you know of a woman inventor-entrepreneur, tell us about her story, and we’ll be sure to feature her soon!

Authored by: Moksha Jain, Marketing

Next Read: This Women’s Day – A tribute to the Women Inventors who made our lives easier!