Maryam Sadeghi, director of Digital Health Hub and CEO at MetaOptima Technology Inc, completed her PhD in Computing Science at Simon Fraser University in the Medical Image Analysis lab working closely with BC Cancer Agency and Skin Care Center at UBC Dermatology. She is interested in e-Health and m-Health applications and innovative patient-centric digital health solutions.
Maryam took home the Gold award at the World Congress of Dermatology in Seoul, Korea, for creating a computer program that uses images to detect signs of skin cancer. There were more than 2,400 submissions and awards were selected by a scientific committee based on criteria such as excellence in research, novelty, results and presentation. She was awarded the Silver Medal of the International ACM Student Research Competition from Microsoft Research and Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) for her research. Her research on skin cancer prevention and detection has also recently received the Innovation Challenge Award 2012 (The Honorable Mention Award) from NSERC, and the CIPPRS Doctoral Dissertation award, 2012 (Honorable mention) from the Canadian Image Processing and Pattern Recognition Society. She also received the Dean of Graduate Studies Convocation Medal as one of SFU’s most outstanding graduate students from the Faculty of Applied Sciences in June 2013.
In 2012, she founded the company MetaOptima Technology Inc. in Vancouver, Canada, developing intelligent technologies for health related real-life problems. Meanwhile Sadeghi’s company, MetaOptima Technology Inc., was one of the 10 companies shortlisted (out of 146 entrants) for the 2013 BCIC New Ventures Competition. The company won a $40,000 Wavefront Wireless prize package. Maryam was also selected as the SFU Entrepreneur of the Year in 2013 and the winner of the Venture Prize from Coast Capital Savings in 2014. In Feb 2015, MetaOptima was listed as a “Ready to Rocket” Emerging tech company in Life Sciences by Rocket Builders.
In addition to leading MetaOptima, Maryam continues her research and science projects as the Science and Technology Advisor at Digital Health Hub at SFU in Surrey. Maryam is also the co-chair of Mayor’s Health Working Group in the Surrey’s Innovation Boulevard project. In addition, she acts as a mentor for CIHR program and works with high-school students in addition to her role as a volunteer in the Let’s Talk Science and Try/CATCH. Try/Catch is an annual event and conference at SFU to promote Computing Science and Engineering for girls in elementary and high-school.
