FemSTEM 2025 Pitch Competition
Join H2i for the 2025 FemSTEM Pitch Competition!
Register now to attend Wednesday March 26th to hear six incredible women-led ventures as they compete for the chance to win funding for their cutting-edge health innovations!
Each year, H2i holds the FemSTEM Pitch Competition as the culminating event of the FemSTEM event series. The pitch competition, judged by a panel of industry experts and key opinion leaders, gives up-and-coming healthcare innovators the opportunity to present their idea to the public and the chance to win funding and in-kind services to scale their project. With FemSTEM’s mandate to inspire, engage, and celebrate women entrepreneurs, this final event spotlights and accelerates the work of the next generation of women entrepreneurs in the healthcare sector.
This year’s finalists are: CELLECT Laboratories Inc., Flow Robotics, NorthMiRs, Pippen AI, PrehabRx and Xatoms.
Awards:
Winner: $15,000 cash prize
1st runner up: $5,000 cash prize
2nd runner up: $5,000 cash prize
All three winners will receive:
- $5,000 in-kind legal services from Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP
- Commercial analysis of potential for investment, $1,000 value, from Mammoth Health Innovation, using their Canadian Health Innovation Evaluation For Success C.H.I.E.F.S™ tool.
The FemSTEM Pitch Competition is made possible by the generous support of Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP, Mammoth Health Innovation and The Temerty Foundation.
Meet The Judges
Kerri Austin (Senior Regulatory Affairs Manager at ICON plc) is a strategic medical device regulatory professional with regulatory and compliance experience in Canadian, US and EU markets. In her current role, Kerri leads the medical device lifecycle approval processes via advising on regulatory strategy, facilitating pre-submission meetings, managing clinical trials and medical device authorisations. Kerri previously worked for over a decade at St. Jude Medical (now Abbott Medical) on the cardiovascular and neuromodulation portfolios and is Regulatory Affairs Certified (RAC).
Dr. Myrna Francis is President, Mfran Enterprises Inc., serving as a trusted advisor to public sector, multi-national technology companies and start-ups on health IT, IT business and product growth strategies, go-to-market approach, development and commercialization of internet 2.0 digital health innovation and governance.
With more than 25 years of experience in the technology and healthcare industries, she has operated across Canada, the United States and Europe. She has held numerous executive level roles with companies such as CGI, IBM, CSC Healthcare and was President and CEO of Canada Health Infoway. In addition to her private sector experience, Dr. Francis has held executive positions in the provincial government related to health policy and services.
Dr. Francis currently sits on the Board of Directors, Audit and Investment Committees of Medavie Inc. and Blue Cross Life Inc. She has previously served on the boards of organizations across multiple industry sectors including – Covalon Technologies Inc.(medical technology), Allstate Canada (insurance), RxCanada (retail pharmacy), Cedara Software Corp.(medical imaging), Medworxx (health IT), Excelerate Inc.(venture fund), George Brown College and OCAD University as well as various health IT associations.
Dr. Francis is also an advisor to Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District, Health Ventures Group, an incubator for start-up health IT companies and H2i.
Dr. Francis received her Ph.D. in Medical Sciences from McMaster University and obtained her ICD.D designation from the Institute of Corporate Directors and the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
With her diverse experience in the public and private sectors internationally, she brings a unique and comprehensive understanding of the challenges and opportunities presented to companies today.
Ester Carrasco is the Head of Client Services at Springborne Life Sciences, a leading compliance service provider supporting early to mid-stage Digital Health and Medical Device companies. At Springborne, she specializes in supporting these companies navigate the complexities of their compliance journey to enable rapid commercialization of innovative healthcare products.
Her responsibilities include regulatory strategy, compliance planning, and leading regulatory filings including FDA submissions.
Ester completed her MEng in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Toronto.
Wendy is one of the founders of Ripple Therapeutics following its spin out from Interface
Biologics in 2020. Ripple’s core technology, Epidel™, is founded on a discovery that drugs can
be designed to deliver themselves without the need for polymers or excipients. The Company has
successfully transitioned from an early preclinical to a clinical stage company raising over $25M
in Seed and Series A funding.
Wendy has been leading teams in the development of local drug delivery products for over 20
years. Prior to returning to Canada in 2016 to join Interface Biologics, Wendy led the Clinical
Program for the development of a drug-eluting, self-expanding, biodegradable scaffold at 480
Biomedical in Boston (Founders, Bob Langer and George Whitesides).
Wendy began her industry career at Boston Scientific in the Corporate R&D group. At Boston
Scientific her work spanned developing combination products to deliver angiogenic biological
agents to leading Regulatory Submission Strategies for approval of Class III combination
products. Wendy is an inventor of over 35 patents in the local drug delivery field.
Wendy received her PhD in Biomaterials from the University of Toronto and began developing
her career interest in local drug delivery at Caltech during her post-doctoral fellowship. During
her post-doc, Wendy also discovered yoga which led her to become a certified yoga instructor.
Wendy has shared her love of yoga through teaching her R&D communities along the way.
Meet the Finalists
CELLECT Laboratories Inc. is transforming cervical cancer screening with a non-invasive, nanotech-enabled collection device that passively captures and stabilizes high-quality cervical cells from menstrual fluid. Designed for seamless lab integration, CELLECT eliminates the need for speculums and swabs, making screening more accessible, comfortable, and efficient for all.
Flow Robotics is revolutionizing the diagnosis and treatment of small intestinal conditions by leveraging continuum robotics and pressure-driven eversion, significantly reducing procedure times, improving success rates, and enhancing patient outcomes.
NorthMiRs is NorthMiRs is an early-stage biopharma startup developing first-in-class miRNA therapies for sepsis.
Pippen AI is a company dedicated to enhancing efficiency in family medicine through its AI-powered physician assistant, Pippen. Designed to reduce administrative burdens such as documentation, referral letters, and billing, Pippen leverages advanced language models, proprietary datasets, and optimized algorithms to save physicians valuable time—equivalent to $96,000 in unpaid work annually—allowing them to focus more on patient care, professional development, and work-life balance.
PrehabRx helps health organizations better support patients undergoing surgery, cancer, and chronic disease.
Xatoms is a water purification company that uses proprietary quantum chemistry and AI algorithms to discover solar-based materials called photocatalysts.