Marita Cheng | |
|---|---|
| Born | 5 March 1989 [1] |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur |
| Website | maritacheng.com |
Marita Cheng AM (born 5 March 1989) is the founder of Robogals. She was named the 2012 Young Australian of the Year. [3] She is the founder and current CEO of Aubot, a start-up robotics company. [4] She co-founded Aipoly, an app to assist blind people to recognise objects using their mobile phones. [5] She was named as one of the World's Top 50 women in Technology by Forbes in 2018 [6] and was recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2016. [7] On 9 June 2019, Cheng was appointed a member of the Order of Australia for significant service to science and technology, particularly to robotics. [8]
Cheng was raised by her mother, a single parent [9] who worked as a hotel room cleaner, [10] in a housing commission apartment in Queensland, Australia. [9]
In 2007, while at university, Cheng founded Nudge, a company which provided reminders by phone or text message to help people manage their prescription drug schedules. [10] She won a prize for the best undergraduate business at the University of Melbourne and then recruited friends to start designing workshops to teach girls about robotics. [5] This became Robogals, which was founded in 2008 [11] for the purpose of encouraging young women into careers in STEM fields. [10] Cheng later graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering in mechatronics and a Bachelor of Computer Science. [5]
In 2011, Cheng was awarded a Churchill Fellowship, which allowed her to visit the U.S., U.K., Germany and Jamaica to learn about international approaches to science education for young women. [12] In 2011, Cheng was also awarded the Anita Borg Institute's Change Agent ABIE Award. [13] [14]
In November 2011, Cheng was named Victorian Young Australian of the Year for 2012, [15] and went on to be named as Young Australian of the Year. [3] In that same year she was also a winner in the Financial Review – Westpac 100 Women of Influence awards' Young Leader category. [16]
Cheng visited China as part of the 40 Year Anniversary of Australia-China Diplomatic Relations, touring Guangzhou, Shanghai, Nanjing, Tianjin and Beijing in 2012. [17]
In 2013 she established a start-up robotics company. [18]
Cheng delivered the closing keynote speech at the 35th World Congress of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts in Hong Kong in 2014. [19]
In 2015, Cheng attended Singularity University's flagship 10-week Graduate Studies Program, where she founded an app that uses AI to enable visually impaired people to recognize objects, [20] receiving TechCrunch coverage during her time at the program. [21] The app won a CES Best of Innovation Award in 2017. [22]
Cheng co-led an Australian delegation of 50 entrepreneurs, industry representatives and government envoys, to Israel alongside Assistant Innovation Minister Wyatt Roy in 2015. [23]
She co-founded Aipoly, which launched in January 2016. Aipoly is an app to assist blind people to recognise objects using their mobile phones. [5]
Cheng returned to her robotics company, receiving a Myer Fellowship, [24] and participated in the Advance Queensland Hot Desq program in 2017, relocating to Brisbane, Australia for 6 months, [25] and the Austrade San Francisco Landing Pad in 2018, which brought her to San Francisco. [26]
From 2012 to 2018, Cheng served on the board of the Foundation for Young Australians. [27] Cheng helped decide on startup investments alongside Eddie McGuire [28] as a board member of RMIT University's New Enterprise Investment Fund (2014-2017), [29] and supported the Victorian startup ecosystem as a board member of the Victorian State Innovation Expert Panel (2016-2018). [30] She was also involved with the Clinton Health Access Initiative as Technology Advisory Board Member (2016-2017). [31]
Cheng has given two TEDx talks, [32] [33] and has been a featured speaker at MIT Technology Review Conference in Singapore, [34] IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), [35] the World Entrepreneurship Forum in Lyon, the Global Summit of Women in Tokyo, [36] and the Girl Scout National Convention in Utah. [37]
She appeared live on TV as a panelist on ABC's Q&A, alongside Nobel laureates Brian Schmidt and Peter Doherty, Suzanne Cory and Chief Scientist of Australia Ian Chubb, [38] and in 2011, served as a judge on The New Inventors. [39] She spoke alongside Ashton Kutcher at Lenovo's #TECHmyway. [40]
Cheng has been profiled in Vogue Australia, [41] InStyle magazine, [42] and The Australian Women's Weekly for her work as a technology entrepreneur. [43]
Cheng frequently attends events via her company's Teleport robot, using the device to meet Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex in 2018, [44] to appear on a panel with Israel's Chief Scientist Avi Hasson, [45] [46] and to give a speech at Robogals' 10-year anniversary gala dinner. [47]
The Victorian young Australian of the year was 22-year-old engineering student Marita Cheng, who founded Robogals Global in 2008 to encourage women to consider a career in the sciences.