Cambridge Entrepreneur One of Four Winners in Women4climate Tech Challenge 2020

A female entrepreneur from Cambridge is one of four winners of the second Women4Climate Tech Challenge* 2020.

Along with 10 other finalists, Lorena Gordillo Dagallier recently pitched her innovative green technology solution, Open-seneca, virtually to a panel of international mayors and city officials. The finalists were due to pitch their ideas live in Lisbon, Portugal, during Entrepreneurship Week in May this year, but the coronavirus pandemic meant the event could not take place as planned.

Championing women in tech

The Women4Climate Tech Challenge is an international contest designed to encourage and promote women-led climate action in C40 cities**. To be selected, the projects must be led by women; address urban sustainability, food, waste, water, urban farming and/or air quality solutions; have measurable impacts, be relevant to its field; and be scalable to other cities.

Winners will get support and acceleration from C40 & partners, including a share of $50,000 in funding to support them in piloting their solutions in one of this year’s host C40 cities: Lisbon, Stockholm, Los Angeles or Tel Aviv-Yafo.

Open-seneca

Lorena is from the University of Cambridge Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology. Her innovative green initiative, Open-seneca, is designed to raise awareness about personal exposure to the solution. It uses low cost, open source mobile air quality sensor networks and so-called “citizen science” throughout cities to capture and record air pollution.

The aim of the initiative is to raise awareness within communities about personal exposure to particulate pollution while at the same time creating pollution maps that can be used to inform policy and urban development.

In addition to providing sensors, the initiative also aims to educate and engage communities through a series of practical workshops in the hope to drive behavioural change and adopt attitudes.

The other winners of the Women4Climate Tech Challenge were Anai Green from Tel Aviv-Yafo, who impressed the judges with her innovative fabric “Lumiweave”, which offers a shade function at the same time as permitting light; and Meiling Gao and Vivian Bi from California, who jointly won with their initiative “Clarity”, a smart, indoor-outdoor low-cost air monitoring system that provides real-time data about air quality.

You can read more about Lorena and her Open-seneca mobile air quality solution here***.

* https://w4c.org/tech-challenge
** https://www.c40.org/
*** https://w4c.org/profile/lorena-gordillo-dagallier