Joana S. Paiva

Founder & C-Level | Auxiliar Professor University of Porto | Photonics, AI & Digitalization, PhD | Forbes 30 Under 30

My name is Joana Paiva (MSc Biomedical Eng., PhD in Physics), I am an Inventor, 3rd time Founder, University Professor, Entrepreneur and passionate about science, biotechnology and about its impact in society and our planet. I’ve been involved in several projects – from planet sustainability, prediction of diseases in early stage, development of new medical devices to fight the pandemics in 2019, quality of food chain and food system traceability, collaborative robotics to reduce time and facilitate the training of complex tasks – always integrated in multidisciplinary teams, both in the Academia as in the private sector. During the past 8 years, I’ve been working in management positions, in Academia and in the board of 3 different companies (as a member of the Board, Founder and C-level). As a result of my experience, I managed different types of stakeholders (research, industrial and governmental partners, investors, clients, advisors), being able (as an example) to convince the deployment of medical devices within the scope of academic clinical trials in several public and private hospitals, and the collection of a set of clinical samples from biobanks at a worldwide level. I was responsible together with the other Founders to bring up a unified strategy in each company, which sometimes implies to accept decisions that were not aligned with my view. I learned to analyse the other’s points and respect that each one has his/her specific expertise, although everyone is entitled and should express his/her opinion – which is exactly what creates the brilliant ideas.

A brief overview about my pathway:
I am the inventor (tech) and founder of iLoF - intelligent Lab on Fiber, Ltd – an Oxford-based startup based on Photonics and Artificial Intelligence that helps to accelerate and scale clinical trials through the development of novel tools for patients’ stratification. As a COT, I led a team of 15 FTE engineers, I was responsible to align the technological roadmap of the company with its business goals. iLoF was my third invention out of six patents that I created. I always worked in a tight relationship with industry, being able to develop four technological products that were spun out to two companies. After iLoF, I co-founded Halitus GmbH, a company that identifies biomarkers for lung disease detection in early stages using the exhaled breath, invested by Roche. Now, I created Shiftsa, a digital platform to evaluate the quality and authenticity of seeds and commodities.