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2021 CIE ALUMNI STORIES

• Ipshita Mandal-Johnson is the CEO of the Global Bio Fund, an impact fund with a world-leading approach to growing diverse entrepreneurs (especially women-led companies) addressing global challenges. She says that New Zealand is full of talent and innovation that the world is crying out for but needs to aim higher to share its gifts at scale globally and be impact-driven. Read more
• William Lockie has turned his passion for food into a fruitful career as General Manager of Woop, New Zealand’s fastest-growing food business. Under his leadership, Woop has had massive revenue growth, been consistently named in Deloitte’s Fast 50 and have evolved their operations to reduce, reuse and recycle. Read more
• Daniel Xu and Ming Cheuk are helping organisations improve their processes and customer experience by taking advantage of innovative technologies like machine learning, computer vision, and conversational AI. Read more
• The NZ Hi-Tech Awards celebrate New Zealand’s most successful hi-tech companies and highest achieving individuals. University of Auckland alumni are well represented in the recently released 2021 finalists list, with alumni involved in every category. Read more
• Award-winning Cropsy Technologies is developing a combination of patent-pending hardware and AI to help growers make data-driven decisions. While their innovations have a number of applications, they are currently focused on viticulture, an industry that the team have identified as ripe for picking. Read more
• In a post-pandemic world, with companies encouraging employees to continue to work from home, how will a healthy team dynamic be maintained? SaaS company Multitudes is helping teams improve culture and performance by providing data-led insights on day to day team behaviours and easy-to-access coaching for managers to unlock more inclusive, higher-performing teams. Read more
• Alimetry, a digital healthcare and diagnostic devices start-up is grounded in world-leading science in gastrointestinal diseases. In the short two years since its inception, it has established itself as a pioneer in health solutions, recently being named a finalist in the NZ Hi-tech Awards. Read more
• Educational start-up Kiwrious is empowering the next generation of innovators and critical thinkers through the Kiwrious Science Experience. Founded by Suranga Nanayakkara, an Associate Professor at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute (ABI), they aim to spark inquiring minds by giving Kiwi students the tools they need to take scientific measurements of the world around them. Read more
• Orbis Diagnostics has developed an accurate, cost-effective quantitative immunity test for Covid-19 capable of verifying a person’s health status and assessing whether vaccines have been effective in as little as 15 minutes. Read more
• A medical device and AI business grounded in research from the University of Auckland is running at pace with the success of its first product, the Digital Knee®.  Read more
• Sustainable space travel may be on the horizon with University of Auckland alumni venture Zenno Astronautics’ development of a fuel-free satellite control and propulsion system. This technology is part of Zenno’s greater mission to create cutting-edge hardware and software that make space exploration sustainable and commercially compelling. Read more
• Software that started as a way for three University of Auckland students to collaborate on their study notes has recently hit 27 million users worldwide. Kami’s cloud-based platform allows educators and students to annotate, view, edit, and collaborate on digital documents from anywhere, transforming the way educators engage and interact with their students. Read more
• The Edmund Hillary Fellowship (EHF) consists of global and local investors, entrepreneurs and changemakers who want to create solutions to global problems from New Zealand and make a lasting positive impact on the world. Read more
• My Auto Shop was founded in early 2020 by the former New Zealand GM of Uber Eats Andy Bowie, alongside University of Auckland Finance, Mechatronics and Mechanical Engineering students Sasha Mates, Paul Rassie and Vincent Wong. They have recently partnered with New Zealand’s largest auction and classifieds site Trade Me. Read more
• A platform developed by a team of nine University of Auckland and AUT alumni has helped over 70,000 Kiwis find and book their Covid vaccinations. Vaxx.nz is a tool that helps people locate an available vaccination centre near them quickly and easily, with the aim of helping New Zealand reach its 90% vaccination target as soon as possible. Read more
• Since arriving in New Zealand in 2017, recent University of Auckland graduate Sejal Bhan has already made her mark on four innovative start-ups tackling challenges in biosecurity, health and wellbeing, motion-capture technology, and electronic waste. Read more
• Online mental wellbeing platform Clearhead has collaborated with youth organisation Mā Te Huruhuru to bring together 40 Māori rangatahi (youth) in South Auckland to learn more about navigating mental health and how to improve their mental wellbeing with Clearhead’s digital tools. The programme also taught participants more about their Māori culture and identity as a protective factor towards a larger goal of suicide prevention. Read more
• The University of Auckland’s annual 40 Under 40 list aims to spotlight alumni who are shining in their personal and professional lives. Honourees are selected for recognition in six different categories depending on where they have made an impact: business leaders, entrepreneurs, disrupters and innovators, humanitarians, performers, and influencers. Nine of this year’s named alumni are former participants of programmes run by CIE. Read more
• Data wrangling start-up Segna have raised substantial investment to advance the development of their innovative machine learning software platform. Segna uses machine learning to aggregate and clean data from multiple sources in under a minute. Its software platform helps businesses of all sizes unlock value from their data faster and more easily by automating the time-consuming, administrative tasks of curating and organising it. Read more