Under the Women TechEU pilot call, 50 promising deep-tech start-ups from the EU Member States and Associated Countries will receive targeted funding and first-class coaching and mentoring. Women TechEU is funded under the European Innovation Ecosystems work programme of Horizon Europe, the EU research and innovation programme.
2021 beneficiaries
Malin Alpsten and Anna Carlsson, founders and CEO and CTO of Bright Day Graphene, a company developing a high quality graphene from biomass to be used in energy storage and other high tech applications.
The company produces large volumes of a type of graphene optimised for energy storage and other applications. Their graphene has high conductivity and a large specific surface area. They call their graphene "green" because it is made from a renewable raw material (instead of graphite) and they don't use toxic chemicals in their production process.
Dr. Katharina Eissing is a quantum physicist and she has decided to put her energy on solving the problem of making plastic packaging fully circular by 2025 and building a profitable responsible business around it.
Digimind is a clean tech AI company focused on providing solutions to design and engineer circular and sustainable packaging. With their solution, they aim at supporting the vision of making plastic packaging fully circular by 2025.
Check this video to find out more about sustainable packaging developed by Digimind.
Emanuela Gatto (Italy), co-founder and CEO of Splastica, a company developing granules of a material that can be moulded like plastic.
The material is 100% biodegradable and compostable also into a home composter. It is stable in normal daily use, but it can be thrown away into the organic fraction of the waste. This innovative material is obtained from milk scaps, following the noble principle of turning a waste into a resource, that perfectly fits into the principles of circular economy.
Johanna Nissén Karlsson is co-founder and CEO of the Swedish tech start up Vividye, which develops removable textile prints, aiming to make the textile industry more circular.
Vividye's technology is integratable in existing industrial settings and aims to facilitate the reuse of garments. With cutting-edge innovation from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, Vividye develops the product in close collaboration with fashion brands.
Monica de Mier (Spain), co-founder and CEO of NEXTMOL, a company offering computational chemistry solutions to accelerate the R&D of better and more sustainable chemicals.
Bytelab Solutions develops NEXTMOL, a Software-as-a-Service platform for chemistry R&D. It provides molecular modelling and artificial intelligence tools to speed up the development of safe and sustainable chemicals. NEXTMOL shortens the path to chemical innovation accelerating the development by 10x over traditional approaches based exclusively on the laboratory.
Dr. Jenny Müller is CEO founder of DIE FRISCHEMANUFAKTUR, a food tech start-up moved from Munich to Saxony-Anhalt in Eastern Germany. Having worked in the strategy department of one of Europe's biggest food retailers, Dr. Jenny Müller realises, how much food waste can be overcome by longer shelf-life of products. So she tackles the challenge for ultra-fresh produce with innovative food-technology.
The deep tech food start-up specialises on developing ground-breaking food-technology prolonging the shelf-life of plant-based ultra-fresh products. The start-up is developing cutting-edge technologies creating plant-based products without added sugars and with a maximum shelf-life.
Karoline Sjødal Olsen (Norway), co-founder and CEO of Blue Lice, a company offering an innovative technology preventing sea lice on salmon by only using a special type of light and organic scent.
Blue Lice develops a system that prevents sea lice infestations in salmon farming in a sustainable way. By only using a light source and the scent of salmon as attractants, the company has made a system of traps attracting and capturing sea lice before it can infest the salmon. This reduces the levels of sea lice at the fish farm, increasing welfare and reducing the cost by removing treatments against sea lice.
Check this Blue Lice video to find out more about how sea lice are captured under the sea.
Margaret Rae is the Founder & CEO of Konree Innovation, a company tackling the single most feared and persistent pest in salmon aquaculture, the salmon louse.
Konree Innovation has a unique deep-tech approach providing active, in-cage, real-time control removing sea lice issues by maintaining a non-touch, stress-free environment for happier, healthier, heavier fish.
Farnaz Sotoodeh, founder and CEO of C2CAT B.V., a Dutch company with disruptive solutions for the development and manufacture of custom-made catalysts for hydrogen storage and renewable energy applications.
C2CAT is specialised in catalysis for H2 production, storage and recycling of CO2. Contribution to the H2 economy and CO2 reduction will be achieved at C2CAT via design, development and commercialisation of cost-effective alternative catalysts suitable for sustainable processes.
Darina Štyriaková (Slovakia), founder and CEO of ekolive.
Ekolive offers an EU-certified, eco-innovative bioleaching technology for waste/mineral/soil treatment. Bacteria dissolve various minerals, release metals and degrade organic contaminants with high efficiency. In this way, new raw material resources can be developed or old ones can be reused. This also contributes to the sustainable elimination of environmental pollution. With this biotechnology, ekolive also produces biostimulants /organic biofertilizers - to replace agrochemicals and increase yields in both organic and conventional farming, and to restore the soil microbiome.
Check this ekolive video to find out more about how bacteria can be used to increase the yield in organic agriculture.
Sara Correyero, PhD in Fluid Mechanics, is the cofounder and COO of IENAI SPACE, a Spanish start-up dedicated to the development of electric propulsion systems for nano and micro satellites.
IENAI SPACE has a unique approach to the in-space mobility problem, providing an end-to-end solution to their customers with their mission analysis software tools, GO and 360, and their customisable electric propulsion system ATHENA.
Héléna Jérôme is the co-founder of Safehear, a Lyon-based startup that designed Louis: a hearing protection for communicating in noisy environments, intended for professionals in the industrial environment. Its mission is to make communication possible in noise while remaining protected from hearing risks.
Safehear has surrounded itself with leading players in their hearing protection markets (EarSonics, EFI Automotive, ST Microelectronics) through collaborations and partnerships to successfully implement its solution and meet a market need.
Check this video to find out more about Louis, a communicating hearing protection developed by Safehear.
Dr. Alla Kasakewitsch (CEO/CRO) and Christina Walch (CFO/CMO) are the co-founders of Soluterials, a deep-tech company offering an innovative nanostructured and truly sustainable aluminum material "SoluteriAl".
SoluteriAl offers the material solution to the needs of industry: meeting the needs due to climate change and related regulations, availability of (local) resources, reduction of production waste, energy efficiency requirements, increased productivity and efficiency, and product design constraints that prevent innovation. SoluteriAl changes the boundaries of metallic material solutions and enables "out of the box" thinking. Its property profile and thus its infinite application possibilities make it a true multifunctional material.
Henriette Maaß is Co-founder and CEO of NanoStruct, a spin-off of the University of Würzburg, Germany, that enables a new reliability in the detection and allocation of smallest traces of harmful substances like environmental pollutants or contaminations in high-purity production processes.
NanoStruct technology offers a new reliability to a powerful method, the so-called surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy or “SERS”. The so-called “SERS-plasters” enable, for the first time, the application of SERS on solid state surfaces thus opening completely new industrial markets.
Dr. Sahar Nassirpour is the co-founder and CEO of the med-tech company MR Shim GmbH based in Germany. Through their integrated solutions for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines, MR Shim aims to take MRI diagnostic to the next level by improving magnetic field homogeneity.
The company developed a novel MRI field homogenisation technology, which is 50x lighter, 5x more power efficient, performs 2x better and updates 250x faster than the current state-of-the-art. They enable real-time, precise and local control of the MRI magnetic field using a compact device.
Elisabeth Paul, co-founder and Managing Director of MUnique Technology GmbH, a deep tech company that develops cutting-edge technology to enhance positioning, navigation & timing for space and ground.
MUnique Technology`s DORT (Dynamic Optical Ranging & Timing) system is an optical pulsed device which offers a new high precise distance measurement. The system is designed for space applications and can measure space relevant distances with a very high resolution. This technology is not only intended for space, but also enables a large number of applications in the terrestrial field, like Large Volume Metrology.
Daiva Urbanavičienė is Co-founder & CEO of THRUST - Intelligent UAV systems, a company developing drone systems for remote sensing and infrastructure diagnostics and its integration with AI-ML powered analytics. Daiva is applying more than 22 years of top-level management experience to lead the company to success.
Replacing helicopters and walking crews with new generation unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with LiDAR, RGB and thermal cameras, combined with machine learning (ML) powered analytics, that can quickly and accurately identify defects and faults in electricity grid elements. THRUST drones are capable to fully substitute walking inspector crew and helicopters for infrastructure inspections at a fraction of a cost. Furthermore, their drones emit 171 times less CO2 per km than helicopters, and 10 times less than cars.
Check this video to meet THRUST's team and find out more about their drones developed for remote sensing and infrastructure diagnostics.
Dominique Waddoup is founder and CEO of BirdShades, a company that saves birds from crashing into windows. BirdShades is developing an invisible window film that makes glass noticeable to birds.
Xiaojun Yang is CEO and co-founder of assemblean, a startup for automating production control through a decentral implementation of the algorithms on the machines. Xiaojun was born in China and after her study of control engineering in Germany, she did a dissertation at the Heinz Nixdorf Institute on supply chain control which ultimately resulted in the funding of assemblean.
Assemblean is an automation and production technology company emerging from years of research in the field of decentralised production control. Xiaojun Yang and Alexander Pöhler, co-founder of assemblean, investigated how to increase the utilisation of production facilities.
Olesja Bondarenko is CEO of Nanordica Medical, Estonian deep tech company developing advanced antibacterial wound care products to reduce infection-related amputations. Olesja received PhD degree in gene technology from Tallinn University of Technology in 2012. She practised at the University of Konstanz in Germany and was a postdoctoral researcher at Karolinska Institute in Sweden and University of Helsinki in Finland.
Nanordica Medical aims to commercialise a new antibacterial nanotechology developed by their scientists and medical doctors to reduce the number of infection-related amputations by 20%.
Check this video to meet Nanordica Medical's team and find out more about their mission to reduce infection-related amputations.
Audrone Kacinskaite-Satkauske - CEO of Avodes, inventor and product designer, is experienced in medical device development, design and marketing. With over 10 years of experience in MedTech industry, she previously managed design, marketing and market entry projects of innovative MedTech start-ups, created number of product as well as UI/UX designs for innovative medical devices.
Avodes has taken a systematic approach to gynaecological product development and created a disruptive solution – safe and effective medical product, which restores healthy balance of women’s microbiota and prevents gynaecological and obstetric diseases. Avodes biotechnological sponge could be used as a menstrual product or whenever it’s needed to prevent vaginal infections.
Check this video to find out more about Avodes sponge which is safe for women and the environment.
Dr. Nikola Müller, founder and CEO of knowing01 (Germany), is devoted to put an end to the waste of existing biomolecular research data through innovative technology and smart software solutions.
knowing01 enables better research for better health. Their game-changing analytics as-a-service solution is separating signal from noise in complex biomedical data. They empower scientists to unlock the value of all their data for robust insights into disease biology for superior diagnostics and therapies; ultimately improving our health and well-being.
Izabela Sabała PhD hab, co-founder, chairman of the Supervisory Board and Chief Scientific Officer at Enzybiotx, company providing a deep-tech discovery platform for tailor-made enzybiotics targeting specific bacteria including antibiotic resistance ones.
Enzybiotx provides a deep-tech platform for tailor made-enzybiotics targeting specific bacteria. The company has developed the platform for designing and generating new enzybiotcs to target pathogenic bacteria of interest as an answer to the need of alternative antimicrobials development. The company, in collaboration with potential clients, is able to prepare tailor-made enzybiotics which target pathogens and perform all tests needed to adjust enzyme’s properties and introduce them to the final products.
Yuliya Shakalisava, PhD, founder and CEO of EXIT071, Leiden-based startup developing innovative technology for the analysis of exosomes in diagnostics and therapeutics. Yuliya has a PhD in Analytical Chemistry, 15 years of international experience in research, management and fundraising and was awarded a Marie Curie fellowship to pursue the research at Leiden University, which led to the creation of EXIT071.
All cells in our body make exosomes to send messages to other cells. Cells pack these tiny bubbles with their molecular information and excrete them into all body fluids – blood, urine, and even tears! This is why exosomes have a huge potential for non-invasive diagnostics and novel therapeutics. EXIT071 has developed a novel microfluidic technology for the separation and analysis of exosomes in the production of exosome-based therapeutics and diagnostic applications.
Prof. Zofia Stepniewska (Poland) is the co-founder and CTO of Microbic Sp. z o.o. She is a retired professor with a long scientific experience in chemistry, soil sciences and biotechnology, having dedicated almost 20 years to research of methanotrophic bacteria. She is an author of over 260 original works and 3 patent disclosures in the domain.
In the current project Prof. Z. Stepniewska is leading the effort to commercialize production of important organic substances like PHB (polyhydroxybutyrate) deploying methanotrophic bacteria, using the waste methane as nutrient supply, with the aim to reduce the emissions of this highly harmful greenhouse gas.
Bárbara Buades (Spain), founder and CEO of MEETOPTICS, an AI meta-search engine specialised in optics and photonics products that aims to make photonics more accessible to researchers and engineers.
MeetOptics is a deep-tech start-up with a disruptive solution, unique in the global market, being the first specialised search engine for real-time photonic components. Thanks to the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms and neural networks, it allows the global scalability of help and professional and technical guidance in this market.
Check this video to find out more about MeetOptics' mission on making photonics easy and accessible for everyone.
Shona is founder and CEO of Kids Speech Labs, developing remote screening and intervention technology for paediatric allied healthcare services, driven by AI to deliver faster intervention to children outside of the therapeutic space.
The company is developing SHARE, a radical, data driven and digitally-delivered solution to address the problems in understanding children’s speech and language development. Delivering accurate, in-home assessment of speech skills is the key to disrupting this industry, empowering the other stakeholders in this story to understand when a child’s speech skills are on track and when they are not.
Dr. Keren Sagiv Friedgut is a pediatrician, a mother of two children with autism, and the CEO and founder of SocialMind, an AI-based early intervention platform. SocialMind ensures that every child with autism gets the best scientific therapy, on-time.
The company developed a protocol that is based on autism evidence-based intervention. SocialMind broke down these comprehensive interventions into a series of concrete parenting skills, that motivate the child to interact and learn throughout the day. When a parent executes and tries to motivate his child to interact, he films himself on his smartphone, uploads it to SocialMind and they create feedback on the important moments.
Check this video to meet Dr. Keren Sagiv Friedgut and find out more about how SocialMind's digital trainer works.
CEO and co-founder of Linksight, a company offering a platform to perform privacy friendly data analytics within a data collaboration, where the companies themselves do the analytics without having to share the underlying data.
Linksight is on a mission to make secure data analytics easy and scalable. They enable their customers to create data driven insights out of distributed datasets, without sharing any sensitive data. How? Through advanced cryptography such as MPC and blockchain. They focus on healthcare.
Dr. Anita Kåss, CEO of Kaass Discovery, has over 15 years experience of treating various autoimmune diseases, completing her PhD in 2015, spurring her to start her company Kaass Discovery in 2017.
Kaass Discovery is focused on developing disruptive medicines and devices for autoimmune diseases to radically improve the lives of patients and reduce the economic impact of these diseases; with their most recent innovation being an AI approach to monitoring autoimmune diseases at home.
Dr. Shalini Kurapati is the co-founder and CEO of Clearbox AI, an Italian synthetic data company that helps enterprises to unlock AI and analytics projects.
Clearbox AI's data engine works on generative models and provides synthetic data for bias mitigation, privacy preservation and data augmentation. The core product, the on-premises Enterprise Solution, is built on patented technology and it's the product of more than 10 years of R&D experience. Clearbox AI has already accrued commercial applications in the banking, insurance and energy industries.
Check this video to find out more about Clearbox AI's mission to help companies to accelerate their AI projects into production.
Elena Pasquali is Co-founder & CEO of EcoSteer, a software startup for Data Ownership.
Its patented multicast end-to-end encryption scheme assigns data access control at its point of origin – any smart device – allowing consumers – i.e. the legal data owners – to unilaterally grant and revoke visibility over their data to chosen third parties, anytime, as mandated by the GDPR. Reconciling Data Economy and Data Privacy within multi-stakeholders IoT ecosystems, this technology supports corporate neutral data exchanges, where consumers are actively involved into the data value chain, thus enhancing their trust and willingness to share personal data, without the costs and legal liabilities of centralised consent management.
Check this video to find out more about EcoSteer's solution on data access control.
Zuzanna Stamirowska (PhD) is the co-founder and CEO of Pathway, Claire Nouet is the co-founder and COO.
Pathway is a Python-centric data processing framework for easy building of real-time and reactive data products, with a scalable engine which takes care of data stream updates behind the scenes.
Büryan Turan is the co-founder and CEO of Simularge which offers industrial software solutions for factories to reduce defects and costs in production processes.
Physics-informed AI algorithms in Simularge’s TwinIDE platform enables factories to create high-fidelity digital representation of processes with less data. These algorithms are served via low-code (Python) and no-code (drag & drop) interfaces for the development of custom applications. Digital Twins and Industry 4.0 applications developed with this technology increase overall equipment efficiency (OEE) which result in more efficient, profitable, and sustainable factories.
Check this video to find out more about how Simularge helps manufacturing industries to reduce cost.
Former Jr. Lab Specialist at the University of California Irvine and Associate Engineer at Roche Diagnostics. She has a Masters in Embedded Cyber-physical systems from UCI and a BA in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Barcelona. She is now cofounder & CEO at The Blue Box Biomedical Solutions.
THE BLUE BOX BIOMEDICAL SOLUTIONS S.L. is a deep tech European start-up developing a medical device based on Artificial Intelligence, capable of detecting breast cancer using urine samples, with 95% accuracy. The Blue Box presents higher performance and safety features as compared to competing technologies.
Check this video to find out more about The Blue Box, a new breast cancer test for a simple and in-home screening.
Dr. Hilla Ben-Pazi is co-founder and CEO of the Israeli tech start-up StrokeAlert, developing the only device to alert stroke.
It is about time: Strokes are episodic treatable events with timely detection. However, most do not reach the hospital on time for treatment, resulting in a devastating outcome. StrokeAlert is a continuous comfortable, wearable automated alert system for stroke that enables early detection and treatment.
Marie Cambot (France), after 20 years of experience in academic research in the field of hematology, she moved to entrepreneurship as the co-founder and CEO of INNOVHEM, a company developing disruptive medical solutions to improve the medical care of the most common genetic disease over the world, Sickle Cell Disease.
By developing an In vitro medical device that combines a set of innovative biomarkers, specifically adapted to the physiopathology of the disease, with artificial intelligence, INNOVHEM's ambition is to participate in the transition to personalised medicine, in order to improve the quality of life of sickle cell patients.
Catarina Custódio (Portugal), co-founder and CEO of Metatissue, a company focused on developing human protein-based biomaterials for 3D cell culture.
Metatissue is focused on the design, production and commercialization of chemically modified human-derived proteins to prepare hydrogels, sponges and bioinks to improve 3D cell culture, disease modelling for drug development and personalized medicine advancements. Metatissue solutions were conceived to create predictive and truly translatable 3D biological in vitro models with the potential to reduce or completely replace the use of animals for biological screenings.
Ella M. Kadas is founder and CEO of Nocturne GmbH in Berlin. The company offers products and services that support physicians in the diagnoses, selecting the appropriate therapy and assessing the course of neurological diseases.
After studying computer science and mathematics in Bucharest and a master's degree with a focus on image processing in Berlin, Ella M. Kadas co-developed the technology of Nocturne as part of her PhD at the NeuroCure Research Center of the Charité Berlin and the Experimental and Clinical Research Center of the Charité and the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine.
Lyn Markey (PhD, MBA) and Camille O’Malley (B.Sc, M.Sc) are co-founders of Xtremedy Medical – a medical device company for treating wound infections by removing microbial contaminants from wounds at the end of surgery. Xtremedy Medical is a spin-out of the BioInnovate program (Galway, Ireland), where the team first observed the devastating impact of deep wound infections on patients and the ineffective treatments available to surgeons. Since 2020, the team have developed a device that delivers Pulsed Field Ablation (PFA) to wounds and kills bacteria by passing electric currents through the wound. The Xtremedy device is up to 1000x more effective at reducing bioburden than current treatments.
Maura Mengoni is the technical officer and co-founder of EMOJ, an artificial intelligence company that puts “the human first before the artificial”. Maura drives innovation and inspires the team to focus on human factors while developing AI.
The startup proposes a set of technologies enabling the recognition of the complex human state to create adaptive and engaging user experience. As WomanTechEU beneficiaries, they are developing a system to track body motions and postures to evaluate the risks for operators in the modern factory.
Check this video to find out more about how EMOJ's team is testing their face and body tracking software.
Camille Migdal (France), co-founder and CEO of Cell&Soft, a company offering innovative deeptech solutions for in vitro cell culture.
Cell&Soft is a deeptech company based in France (AURA region) which develops, produces and sells innovative solutions for in vitro cell culture, in the field of oncology and stem cell research. The objective of Cell&Soft is to accelerate the discovery of new drugs with an average success rate of more than 20%, while limiting the use of animal models.
Check this video to find out more about Cell&Soft and its mission on reinvent cell culture.
Paola Occhetta is co-founder and CEO of BiomimX, an Italian company pioneer in the generation of advanced predictive models of human organs and pathologies that will revolutionise the way to test drugs.
Built upon uBeat® proprietary technological platform, BiomimX introduces beating Organs-on-Chip (OoC), in vitro human tissue models that bring human-relevant data early in drug development. Beating OoC allow to increase the efficacy of drug discovery programs by merging for the first time 4 key ingredients: human cells, for direct clinical translation; 3D tissue architecture; miniaturisation, for faster and cheaper results; motion, replicating tissue-specific human mechanics.
Check this BiomimX video to find out more about why mechanical stimulation is so important for your preclinical in vitro models.
Maria Barøy Ræder is co-founder and CEO of Preforma, a platform for systems medicine, using artificial intelligence to help evolve healthcare from reactive disease care to care that is predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory.
Preforma cooperates closely with the healthcare sector, and has so far used experience from more than 100 000 consultations to improve women's health around the world.
Siva Konstance Snarby (Norway), co-founder and CEO of Connect the Dots (CTD).
At CTD, they work towards facilitating a more efficient future for medical training with new technology, guided by medical expertise. Their tool differs from state of the art as it allows its users to be present in complex situations that can be hard, or even impossible, to recreate using traditional educational tools. The training tool enables health personnel to be immersed in realistic scenarios before encountering them in real life, thereby preparing them for real life events where they have to execute rapidly in order to save patients life.
Andreia Valente and Helena Garcia (Portugal), founders of R-nuucell, a spin-off from Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, want to address an unmet medical need by developing a targeted innovative chemotherapeutic agent to treat resistant and metastatic cancers.
In particular, R-nuucell is now developing a new drug to treat Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) for which there is no specific and efficient treatment in the market. The results gathered so far show that the potential of our new drug is grounded in its capacity to eliminate the ability of the cancer cells to invade and metastasize. This happens because the target of the drug is the cells’ foundation (i.e. the cytoskeleton).
Yana Vereshchaga and Daniela Wirthl (Austria), co-founders, CTO, and COO of sendance GmbH. Their company produces soft sensor systems enabling any 3D curved surface to sense. The company first integrated its know-how technology into orthotic insoles for diabetic patients to stop foot ulceration.
This groundbreaking solution in the field of stretchable electronics enables for the first time a quantitative analysis of the fit of custom-made orthotic devices. Sendance provides an integrated software solution called sendance-cloud for managing and visualising the data gathered by the sendance-grids.