Elizabeth Iorns

Can’t sleep on Elizabeth Iorns – this absolute legend in the science startup world. She’s the kind of person who jumped into the deep end early on and never looked back. Born in Melbourne, grew up in New Zealand, and now she’s chilling in Palo Alto, but her story is all about breaking barriers and pushing science forward.

She kicked things off with a solid background in biomedical science – got her first-class honors from the University of Auckland, then went all-in with a Ph.D. in Cancer Biology at the Institute of Cancer Research in London. Basically, she’s a legit brainiac when it comes to cancer research. She was an Assistant Professor at the University of Miami, still keeps that title as an Adjunct – so she’s super connected to academia.

But here’s where it gets wild: instead of just staying in the lab, she saw how messy and slow scientific research can be. Like, so much waste, so much duplication, so much bullshit that slows down real progress. That’s what sparked her to build *Science Exchange* in 2011 – a marketplace that connects scientists and companies with outsourced R&D labs all over the world. Think of it like the Upwork of science, but for research. She launched this after her time at Miami, and it’s become a total big change for making scientific work more transparent, fast, and accessible.

And she didn’t stop there. Elizabeth’s also a part-time partner at Y Combinator – went through their batch back in 2011 – so she’s plugged into the startup scene and knows how to spot and scale the real deal. She’s also co-founded Reformer Therapeutics, focusing on immuno-oncology (cancer-fighting stuff that’s super hot right now), and is an advisor to Transcripta Bio. Basically, she’s constantly pushing into new biotech frontiers, all fueled by her passion to make science better.

On top of that, she’s big on improving reproducibility in research – she’s a co-director of the Reproducibility Initiative, fighting for more transparency and trust in science. She’s been recognized globally, getting awards like Nature’s 10, the Kauffman Foundation’s New Entrepreneur Award, and being named in WIRED’s ’50 Women Who Are Changing The World’. That’s no joke.

What does all this say about her? She’s driven by a real desire to fix the broken parts of science, to make research more open and collaborative, and to speed up discovery. Her process from a scientist to a startup founder and investor shows she’s all about real impact, not just profits. She’s someone who saw a problem in her world, jumped into it, and created a solution that’s now changing how science works at a fundamental level.

So, in short – Elizabeth Iorns is the real deal. A scientist turned entrepreneur who’s crushing it at the intersection of biotech and tech, making science faster, fairer, and more transparent. That’s why she’s one of the most important people in the game today.