2020 SA Award
The 2020 SA Pearcey Entrepreneur Award winner is Dr Michelle Perugini. On informing Michelle of the award, Geoff Rohrsheim representing the SA Pearcey judging committee, said that Michelle was surprised and honoured by accolade and hoped she could continue to inspire young women into technology related fields. Due to Covid restrictions (Adelaide is currently in lockdown) a more formal event for the presentation is planned later in the month.
Michelle Perugini
Dr Michelle Perugini is an entrepreneur, academic and an internationally renowned expert in health, medical research, advanced analytics,
and cognitive AI.
Michelle spent the first 13 years of her career in health and medical research, specialising in predictive genetics and translational
medicine. Michelle led large complex research projects that translated genetic mutation analysis (bioinformatics) to clinical treatments for
cancer patients. She was also the pioneer of new methods in proteomics that now drive drug discovery.
In 2007 Michelle co-founded (with her husband) the innovative start-up ISD Analytics where she led the research and development, and
commercialisation, of its award¬ winning human-population behaviour predictive analytics software product Simulait. ISD Analytics was
acquired by Ernst & Young (EY) in 2015 and became one of EY's global suite of analytics products.
Michelle is now working with and mentoring various innovative technology start-ups, and is a co-founder and CEO of Presagen and Life
Whisperer.
Presagen is changing the way medical data from around the world is connected with artificial intelligence, to build globally scalable and
unbiased medical products across all industries in healthcare. Presagen's AI Open Projects in an online platform that safely connects data
from clinics globally to co-develop medical AI products that can be delivered at scale and at low cost.
Presagen's first product is Life Whisperer. Life Whisperer uses artificial intelligence (AI) to better identify healthy embryos for IVF, and
to ultimately improve outcomes for couples wanting to have children.
Michelle is also more generally active in the startup community as an advisor (e.g. Dept Business, Praxis Aeronautics, Link4), mentor (e.g. Faster Capital, CSIRO ON, Techstars), panellist (e.g. Women in Tech) and speaker (e.g. StartCon).
