Judging panel
Meet our judges — visionaries and revered luminaries shaping the future of technology.
Magdalena Skipper
Editor in Chief, Nature
Victoria Alonsoperez
Inventor / entrepreneur, Chipsafer + IEETech
Kiana Aran
Winner of SONY WOMEN IN TECHNOLOGY AWARD with Nature 2025
Olga Bubnova
Chief Editor of Nature Sensors
Panel chairperson Magdalena Skipper is Editor in Chief of Nature and Chief Editorial Advisor to the Nature Portfolio. She is a fellow of the International Science Council and is a member of the NASEM The Strategic Council for Research Excellence, Integrity, and Trust and the Scientific Advisory Council for the UK Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists. She holds a PhD in genetics from the University of Cambridge. She is a champion of women in research, collaboration, positive research culture and transparent science.
Victoria Alonsoperez is a Uruguayan inventor and Founder & CEO of Chipsafer, based in Singapore. She is an Electronics & Telecommunications Engineer and her patented inventions pioneered the satellite-enabled livestock tracking industry. She is a UN Young Leader for the Sustainable Development Goals, an International Chamber of Commerce Small Business Champion, and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. She has a passion for space and for neurodiversity advocacy, with expertise in satellite technology, the internet of things and sustainability.
Kiana Aran is a professor of bioengineering and medicine at UC San Diego, is best known for pioneering work in the fusion of biology with electronics to enhance precision medicine. Among her achievements is the development of a CRISPR-powered electronic chip made from graphene, designed for the rapid detection of genetic diseases and respiratory infections such as COVID-19.
Olga Bubnova received her master's degree in mechanical engineering from SSAU, Russia. After graduation, she spent three years working as a system engineer in the automotive industry. In 2008, she began her studies on organic thermoelectrics at Linköping University in Sweden, where she went on to obtain her PhD in 2013. She worked at the University of Cambridge as a postdoctoral researcher, focusing on organic PV. Olga joined Nature Research in October 2015 and worked at Nature Nanotechnology before becoming Chief Editor at Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering in 2023. In 2025, she was appointed as Chief Editor at Nature Sensors.
Rebecca Enonchong
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of AppsTech
Makiko Kan
Distinguished Engineer of Sony Group Corporation
Hiroaki Kitano
Chief Technology Fellow, Sony Group Corporation
Geetha Manjunath
CEO & CTO, Niramai
Rebecca Enonchong is a Cameroonian technology entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of AppsTech. She is best known for her work promoting technology in Africa.
In 2002, The World Economic Forum of Davos, Switzerland named Rebecca a Global Leader for Tomorrow (GLT); In March 2014, Forbes listed her as one of the ‘10 Female Tech Founders to Watch in Africa’. She has spent much of her career promoting technology in Africa; she was the founder and Chairperson of the Africa Technology Forum, a non-profit dedicated to helping technology startups.
Makiko Kan has been actively engaged in the research and development of channel coding, specifically focusing on probabilistic codes such as Turbo and LDPC codes, since joining Sony in 2000. The codes and associated technologies she developed have been widely adopted for digital broadcasting systems worldwide, becoming an integral part of television sets globally. She has been serving as a Corporate Distinguished Engineer at Sony since 2020 and holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics. As a Distinguished Engineer, she actively promotes diversity initiatives throughout the engineering community at Sony.
Hiroaki Kitano is Chief Technology Fellow at Sony Group Corporation. Kitano served as Chief Technology Officer and Senior Executive Vice President of the company from April 2022 to March 2024 and as Chief Technology Officer and Executive Deputy President of the company from April 2024 to March 2025. He joined Sony Computer Science Laboratories (Sony CSL) in 1993, serving as President and CEO of the company since 2011. As a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, Kitano built large-scale data-driven AI systems on massively parallel computers, for which he received the Computers and Thought Award from IJCAI. At Sony CSL and California Institute of Technology, he pioneered the field of systems biology. Outside Sony, Kitano is a member of the OECD Expert Group on AI Futures, Japan’s AI Strategy Council and AI Safety Institute. Within academia, he serves as a professor at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST). He is the Founding President of RoboCup Federation. In 2021, Kitano established the Nobel Turing Challenge, a grand challenge to develop a new engine for scientific discovery.
Geetha Manjunath is an Indian entrepreneur and computer scientist. She is the founder and CEO of NIRAMAI Health Analytix, a Bengaluru based start-up that provides non-invasive, radiation free breast cancer screening through AI.
NIRAMAI, which stands for “Non-Invasive Risk Assessment with Machine Intelligence,” uses portable technology to detect breast cancer and is working on detecting the presence of the parasitic worm that causes river blindness. The company is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr Manjunath holds 16 US patents for her work and in 2020, she was named on one of the Forbes List Top 20 Self-Made Women India.
Amanda Randles
Winner of SONY WOMEN IN TECHNOLOGY AWARD with Nature 2025
Larissa Suzuki
Technical Director (Office of the CTO), Google
Yating Wan
Winner of SONY WOMEN IN TECHNOLOGY AWARD with Nature 2025
Rachel Pei Chin Won
Founding Editor of Nature Photonics
Amanda Randles, a computational scientist and biomedical engineer, leads the Randles Lab at Duke University and is known for her contributions to high performance computing, machine learning, and the personalized modeling for disease diagnostics and treatment.
Larissa Suzuki is a Technical Director in the Office of the CTO at Google, a Visiting Scientist at Nasa/JPL and an Honorary Associate Professor of University College London.
As a trailblazer in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, she has engineered solutions that span across realms — from space science, healthcare, and finance to smart cities, federated computations, Internet of Everything, and robotics. She is Google AI Principles Ethics Fellow and Pioneer, contributing to ethical AI practices.
Yating Wan, an Assistant Professor at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, is recognized for her novel integration of ‘quantum dot’ lasers — nanocrystals made from semi-conductor materials — with silicon photonics demonstrate important progress toward commercial use of photonic chips.
Rachel Pei Chin Won joined Nature Photonics in June 2006 as one of its founding editors, after working as a Medici Fellow for Aston University's Business Partnership Unit in Birmingham, UK, commercializing research output. She obtained her PhD in optical fibre sensing, microwave photonics and nonlinear optics as a member of Aston University's Photonics Research Group. Prior to that, she worked as an Optics Engineer in the Optical Storage R&D Department of Philips Electronics Singapore. She holds a Master's degree from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and a Bachelor's degree from the National University of Malaysia. Rachel is also a Fellow of OPTICA and the International Society of Optics and Photonics (SPIE). She is based in London.
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Nature is dedicated to publishing outstanding advances across all areas of research and engineering. Nature is committed to promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in research communication and publishing, and recognizes the pressing need to recognize and reward women for their contributions.