We are delighted to announce that our founder and CTO, Dr. Shakar Jafari, has won a “Women in Innovation” award from Innovate UK. The competition looked for women who can demonstrate exceptional leadership in innovation and who can inspire the next generation of girls to enter science and engineering.

From Intra-Uterine Devices To Revolutionary Radiation Detectors

Dr. Shakar, who comes from Afghanistan and studied for her PhD at the University of Surrey, already invented a low cost intra-uterine device to treat infertile women while she was working at a children’s medical centre in Kabul. That technique has now been used on over 14,000 women. In the UK Shakar discovered that micro silica (glass) beads are better radiation detectors than anything else we have. After that was published Shakar started this company, Trueinvivo®, as she had the idea that strings of glass detectors could be inserted in a patient to enable accurate readings of the dose and spread of radiation received by a patient undergoing radiotherapy. With a suitable automatic reader, it would enable clinicians to have a “radiation ruler” and to be confident that the right planned dose was hitting the tumour and avoiding healthy tissue and organs.

Shakar is the first woman from Afghanistan to be awarded a science PhD and she is already a role model for girls and women there. We will publish an interview with Shakar in due course!