Marita Cheng

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]

Marita Cheng

AM
Born (1989-03-05) 5 March 1989[1]
Cairns, Queensland, Australia[2]
NationalityAustralian
OccupationEntrepreneur
Websitemaritacheng.com

Early life

Cheng was raised by her mother, a single parent[8] who worked as a hotel room cleaner,[9] in a housing commission apartment.[8]

Career

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.[9] 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[10] for the purpose of encouraging young women into careers in STEM fields.[9] 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.[11] In 2011, Cheng was also awarded the Anita Borg Institute's Change Agent ABIE Award.[12][13]

In November 2011, Cheng was named Victorian Young Australian of the Year for 2012,[14] 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.[15]

Cheng visited China as part of the 40 Year Anniversary of Australia-China Diplomatic Relations, touring Guangzhou, Shanghai, Nanjing, Tianjin and Beijing in 2012.[16]

In 2013 she established a start-up robotics company.[17]

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.[18]

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,[19] receiving TechCrunch coverage during her time at the program.[20] The app won a CES Best of Innovation Award in 2017.[21]

Cheng co-led an Australian delegation of 50 entrepreneurs, industry representatives and government envoys, to Israel alongside Assistant Innovation Minister Wyatt Roy in 2015.[22]

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,[23] and participated in the Advance Queensland Hot Desq program in 2017, relocating to Brisbane, Australia for 6 months,[24] and the Austrade San Francisco Landing Pad in 2018, which brought her to San Francisco.[25]

From 2012–2018, Cheng served on the board of the Foundation for Young Australians.[26] Cheng helped decide on startup investments alongside Eddie McGuire[27] as a board member of RMIT University's New Enterprise Investment Fund (2014-2017),[28] and supported the Victorian startup ecosystem as a board member of the Victorian State Innovation Expert Panel (2016-2018).[29] She was also involved with the Clinton Health Access Initiative as Technology Advisory Board Member (2016-2017).[30]

Public appearance

Cheng has given two TEDx talks,[31][32] and has been a featured speaker at MIT Technology Review Conference in Singapore,[33] IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA),[34] the World Entrepreneurship Forum in Lyon, the Global Summit of Women in Tokyo,[35] and the Girl Scout National Convention in Utah.[36]

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,[37] and in 2011, served as a judge on The New Inventors.[38] She spoke alongside Ashton Kutcher at Lenovo's #TECHmyway.[39]

Cheng has been profiled in Vogue Australia,[40] InStyle magazine,[41] and The Australian Women's Weekly for her work as a technology entrepreneur.[42]

Cheng frequently attends events via her company's Teleport robot, using the device to meet Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex in 2018,[43] to appear on a panel with Israel's Chief Scientist Avi Hasson,[44][45] and to give a speech at Robogals' 10-year anniversary gala dinner.[46]

Awards and other accolades
  • 2012 – Young Australian of the Year
  • 2014 – RoboHub 25 Women in Robotics you need to know about[47]
  • 2014 – Global Engineering Deans Council Diversity Award[48][49]
  • 2016 – Forbes 30 Under 30
  • 2016 – Asia Society's Asia Game Changer Award[50]
  • 2017 – American Australian Association Next Generation Leader[51]
  • 2018 – Forbes World's Top 50 Women in Tech

References
  1. "myRobogals - Profile - Marita Cheng". my.robogals.org.
  2. Packham, Laura (26 January 2012). "Young Australian of the Year honour for Cairns girl Marita Cheng". The Cairns Post. Retrieved 3 February 2012.
  3. "Young Australian of the Year 2012". National Australia Day Council. Retrieved 27 January 2014.
  4. "Aubot - About". 2018. Retrieved 6 March 2018.
  5. Blackwell, Geoff; Hobday, Ruth (2017). 200 women: who will change the way you see the world. Richmond, Victoria: Echo in association with Blackwell&Ruth. p. 367. ISBN 9781760408183.
  6. "The World's Top 50 Women in Tech". Forbes. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  7. Howard, Caroline. "30 Under 30 Discovering Brave New Worlds in Science And Healthcare". Forbes. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  8. Katherine Firkin (15 September 2010). "Mum's little helper - Extraordinary citizens recognized for bravery". Herald Sun. p. 010.
  9. Robyn Rankin (29 December 2010). "Marita Cheng". The Cairns Eye. p. 12.
  10. Bridie Smith (15 November 2011). "Rush in leading role among society's mentors". The Age. p. 5. 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
  11. "Quite a Fellow". The Cairns Sun. 13 July 2011. p. 1.
  12. "Abie Awards - AnitaB.org". Archived from the original on 7 August 2017. Retrieved 7 August 2017.
  13. "Marita Cheng - AnitaB.org". 1 October 2011.
  14. "Victorian Australian of the Year award recipients 2012 announced". Australianoftheyear.org. 14 November 2011. Retrieved 27 February 2014.
  15. Upton, Louise (8 July 2013). "How Marita Cheng engineered success". Australian Financial Review. Retrieved 27 February 2014.
  16. admin (16 January 2013). "Message from the Australian Ambassador to China: Celebrating 40 years". Australia China Connections. Retrieved 20 March 2019.
  17. Pennington, Sylvia (19 September 2013). "What Marita Cheng did next". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 27 February 2014.
  18. "WAGGGS 35th World Congress program". Archived from the original on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 9 July 2014.
  19. "Marita Cheng: The Australian robotist helping blind people see with the click of a button". Advance. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  20. "Aipoly Puts Machine Vision in the Hands of the Visually Impaired". TechCrunch. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  21. "Aipoly Vision Wins the Best of Innovation Award at CES2017". COOL BLIND TECH. 6 January 2017. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  22. Mao, Frances (25 October 2015). "Wyatt Roy headed to start-up nation Israel". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  23. "2016 Myer Innovation Fellows Announced". Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  24. Queensland, Advance (13 October 2017). "Robot Queen returns to Queensland". Medium. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  25. "Aubot- Australian Landing Pad Participant San Francisco - Australia Unlimited". www.australiaunlimited.com. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  26. "Young Australians Appointed to FYA Board | PBA". Pro Bono Australia. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  27. "RMIT invests $100,000 in four student start-ups - RMIT University". www.rmit.edu.au. Retrieved 20 March 2019.
  28. "Entrepreneurs 'Start Up Nation' Innovation Delegation to Israel". www.spacecubed.com. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  29. "Victorian Innovation Takes An Expert Lead". Premier of Victoria. 12 February 2016. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  30. "Announcing Marita Cheng as ASCILITE keynote – ASCILITE 2017". Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  31. TEDx Talks (14 May 2013), We Need to Teach Our Kids to be Makers: Marita Cheng at TEDxSydney, retrieved 19 March 2019
  32. TEDx Talks (22 August 2016), If the blind could see | Alberto Rizzoli and Marita Cheng | TEDxMelbourne, retrieved 19 March 2019
  33. "EmTech Singapore lifts the curtain on future technologies". Digital News Asia. 28 January 2015. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  34. "ICRA-X". IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2018. 11 January 2018. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  35. "2017 Summit Archive – Global Summit of Women". Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  36. "World Conference – 2014". Girl Guides Australia. 11 October 2013. Retrieved 20 March 2019.
  37. Science: Precious Petals to Passionate Teachers, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 15 September 2014, retrieved 20 March 2019
  38. "YOUNG ACHIEVERS AWARDS - 2013/2014". old.rotaryclubofmelbourne.org.au. Retrieved 20 March 2019.
  39. Lenovo Australia and New Zealand (12 February 2015), 2015 #TECHmyway livestream live in Sydney Australia, retrieved 20 March 2019
  40. Clark, Lucie (31 May 2018). "Five lessons in tech success from entrepreneur Marita Cheng". Vogue.com.au. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  41. Cincotta, Katie (17 May 2015). "Win helps inventor Marita Cheng develop Teleroo robot". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  42. "Meet The Weekly's Women of the Future winners". Now To Love. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  43. "Young Victorians impress royal visitors". Special Broadcasting Service. 18 October 2018. Retrieved 20 March 2019.
  44. "Israel's chief scientist to come face to face with Aussie robot". Australian Financial Review. 20 November 2015. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  45. "Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce". www.aicc.org.au. Retrieved 20 March 2019.
  46. "Robogals 10th Anniversary Celebration – Robogals". Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  47. "25 women in robotics you need to know about (2014) | Robohub". Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  48. "'Robogal' Marita does it again". www.couriermail.com.au. 3 December 2014. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  49. "Australian engineer wins global diversity award". Australian Aviation. 5 December 2014. Retrieved 20 March 2019.
  50. "Asia Society Honors I.M. Pei, Other 'Asia Game Changers' at United Nations". Asia Society. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  51. "American Australian Association". www.americanaustralian.org. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
Awards
Preceded by
Jessica Watson		 Young Australian of the Year
2012		 Succeeded by
Akram Azimi
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