Maria Artunduaga, MD, MPH, MTMFounder

United States - Mountain View, California,

I’m a Harvard/Cal-trained scientist and translational physician who abandoned a plastic surgery career to become a CEO. I did it because of my abuela Sylvia. I was close to my grandmother growing up, and I witnessed her struggles to understand when her emphysema was exacerbating. Home lung monitoring technologies are inaccurate leaving patients and doctors to rely only on symptoms. As a result, my grandmother died. Her experience with COPD inspired me to found Respira Labs, so that no one else should die because of misdiagnosis.

I love solving hard problems. I excel at applying my strong analytical skills to find unexpected connections among diverse disciplines. My life exemplifies this: I’m a Colombia Presidential and National Merit Scholar (top 0.1%, Valedictorian); started college at 16, and graduated in the top of my class at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, my country’s #1 medical school. After a 4-year Harvard postdoc and a brief stint in plastic surgery at UChicago, I re-trained in global public health and translational medicine at the top three U.S. public schools: UWashington, UCBerkeley and UCSF. I’ve co-led NIH/Gates funded projects, published in Nature, NEJM and PNAS, received $2+ million in awards, raised $1.3M from investors and granted an “Extraordinary Abilities” green card just 4 years after relocating to the US (average is 8+).

Respira Labs combines lung physiology, IoT sensors, signal processing and AI/ML. My enduring passion to help others motivates me to embrace any level of complexity. I enjoy questioning in service of my mission, something that practicing clinical medicine didn't encourage. So I envision Respira Labs as having a culture where people relish problems as gifts of discovery, where fearless nonconformists are driven by social purpose. Someone with my level of energy is equipped to take our invention to market.

I’m a strong advocate for equity and social justice as I experienced discrimination throughout my academic career. I'm involved in initiatives that support women and other underrepresented minorities in STEM and entrepreneurship. I come from a family of physicians (4 of 6), but I’m married to an electronics-software engineer, and have two fur balls of joy, as pets. At 42, I had my first child after a 4-year-long IVF journey (6 retrievals and 6 transfers). As an immigrant entrepreneur, I know courage and persistence lead to positive outcomes.

If you’re interested in hearing more, follow me in Twitter @DrArtunduaga or e-mail me at maria@respiralabs.com if you have questions! Gracias :)