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From Dinosaurs To Bionic Limbs: The 2018 Europe 30 Under 30 In Science And Healthcare

This article is more than 6 years old.

By Ellie Kincaid and Robin Andrews

It's a paradoxical goal: increase detection of early-stage melanoma while preventing unnecessary biopsies. Paris-based DAMAE Medical thinks it can—solving what has been an unreachable medical holy grail. Anaïs Barut, 25, and David Siret, 26, have raised $2.4 million from from European healthcare investors including Partech Ventures and Idinvest Partners to develop a device that uses infrared light to image tissue down to the cellular level up to 1 millimeter deep into the skin. The hardest part? Not physics or medicine, but bridging the gap between the two. “They speak very different languages,” says Barut, “but at the same time, I believe that when you build this kind of bridge, it’s good for innovation.”

Barut and Siret are just two of the young entrepreneurs and researchers on the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science and Healthcare for Europe. The list was selected by Forbes editors after consulting an expert panel. This year our judges were Paul Barrett, Merit Researcher in Earth Sciences at the Natural History Museum in London; Katherine Joy, Royal Society University Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer at the UK's University of Manchester; and Talib Alhinai, Doctoral Researcher in Aerial Robotics at Imperial College London and Under 30 Europe alum.

Oliver Armitage and Emil Hewage at Cambridge Bio-Augmentation Systems hope to bridge the tricky gap between bionic devices--both limbs and organs--and the body’s nervous system, making neural interfaces for bionic implants. Devika Wood's Vida has raised $3.8 million for the company's platform to help people who are elderly, disabled or otherwise disadvantaged find a carer to look after them and make their life a little more normal. Aidoc, cofounded by Elad Walach, Guy Reiner, and Michael Braginsky, uses deep learning-based AI to detect critical findings in medical images and help physicians read medical images more efficiently. They've raised $10.5 million and have seven major hospitals participating in their beta program. After receiving the regulatory go-ahead to commercialize their product in Europe, they're working with multiple sites and planning to open a new EU headquarters in the next several months.

Many of this year's honorees are exploring ways 3D printing can help improve medical care. Samantha Payne's Open Bionics has raised $2.8 million in seed funding to make 3D-printed working bionic hand replacements that cost 12 times less than the standard commercially available model. At Oral3D, Giuseppe Cicero and Martina Francesca Ferracane enable dentists performing oral surgery to create 3D printed models of a patient’s mouth in less than one hour, making surgery more predictable and communication with patients easier than using the usual 2D images generated from CT scans.

Some have their sights set on healthcare problems in the developing world. Jawad Fares' work led to a scale to assess injuries from cluster munitions -- bombs that release lots of smaller explosives -- based on functional impairment, helping doctors determine the best possible treatment. Will Broadway invented a portable refrigeration device that keeps vaccines at stable temperatures in hostile or harsh environments for more than 10 times longer than the current technology, and founded Isobar to scale up and commercialize the technology.

Credit: Levon Biss for Forbes

They're not shying away from drug development, either. With backing from YCombinator, Zuzanna Brzosko and Anna Perdrix Rosell at Sixfold Bioscience are developing customizable nanoparticles to safely and effectively deliver a variety of therapeutic and diagnostic molecules to diseased cells. Priyanka Joshi created a small molecule library that's the basis for starting a drug discovery program at the Centre for Misfolding Diseases at University of Cambridge. Flaviu Cipcigan's research at IBM uses data science and computer simulation to design new antibacterials, working with collaborators from universities, government labs, and pharmaceutical companies to test and ultimately manufacture the best candidates.

Not all of the innovators are focused on medicine. As a PhD student, Arnau Verdaguer developed eco-friendly tech for purifying and reusing wastewater that he's commercializing with his company HPNow. Estefania Tapias and her team at ETH Zurich and at the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore work on a project to map data on how residents of the tropical city experience heat. With that data, the hope is urban planners can improve the city's design and disperse heat more effectively. Matthew Baron's research made the cover of Nature in 2017 for rewriting the dinosaur family tree, moving one key group of dinosaurs--the ones that evolved into birds--across to the same category as beasts like the Stegosaurus. Simultaneously, it challenged a 130-year-old theory and triggered a major upset in the world of paleontology. (Barrett was also a co-author on this paper and recused himself from evaluating Baron for the 30 Under 30 list.)

Others aim to help scientists to do their jobs. Jan Domanski and Jake Schofield cofounded Labstep, a software company that helps researchers at universities and commercial biotech companies record and share experimental procedures and results to make it easier to replicate their work. With Redbrick Molecular, Andy Hogben and James Gibbons play matchmaker between academic chemists and companies trying to develop new drugs. Johanna Pirker is targeting the early pipeline of scientists: she developed a VR physics lab to encourage more high school students to consider careers in STEM.

The Europe 30 Under 30 in Science and Healthcare are just getting started. Check out the full list for more on what they're up to.