Imogen Wright
Imogen Wright | |
|---|---|
 Wright in 2017 | |
| Born | Imogen Abigail Wright January 21, 1986 |
| Education | University of the Western Cape |
| Occupations |
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| Known for | Co-founder of Hyrax Biosciences |
Imogen Wright is a South African software developer and bioinformatician. She is co-founder and CTO of Hyrax Biosciences, a software development company specialising in DNA analysis programs.
Education
She earned a Bachelor of Science in computer science and Physics at Rhodes University. They then earned a Master of Science in theoretical physics at the Perimeter Institute in Canada. In 2015 the also earned a PhD in bioinformatics from the University of Western Cape.
Career
In the past Wright has worked for Skimlinks. They were senior software developer and team leader at the big data startup in London. Wright also worked for the Amazon EC2 compute team as a software development engineer. They were a UWC-SANBI (University of the Western Cape’s South African Bioinformatics Institute) post-doctoral research fellow.
Awards
Wright was the 2016 runner-up for the Innovation Prize for Africa. She won the prize of $25,000 for Exatype, a piece of software developed by Hyrax Biosciences. Exatype is genotyping and drug-resistance testing software, initially used for HIV-positive patients. They were also invited to, but did not attend, the five-week TechWoman program in 2016. From 2300 applicants they were one of 90 chosen. The program was started by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2011.