30 Under 30 Europe 2024: The Founders Fixing Painful Periods, Printing Prosthetics And Pulverizing Pathogens

The scientists, doctors and entrepreneurs of this year’s 30 Under 30 list for Science & Healthcare are working to improve healthcare and our understanding of the world around us.

As the global birth rate declines and the percentage of people over the age of 60 grows, one of the big questions facing many families is how to care for aging relatives. Will Donnelly hopes to make finding a spot in a retirement or care home as easy as finding a hotel stay. The aim of his U.K.-based startup Lottie is to “transform the industry from offline to online.”

So far he’s raised $32.5 million in funding from investors including Accel and General Catalyst to build an easy-to-use website for families and operating software for senior care providers. His biggest challenge? Changing people’s perception of long-term care. “I really do want to make care homes cool and something that people are excited about and look forward to,” he told Forbes.

Donnelly, 29, is just one of the enterprising founders on this year’s 30 Under 30 Europe list for Science and Healthcare. For more than a decade, Forbes has highlighted young scientists and entrepreneurs for our annual 30 Under 30 list, with the help of nominations from the public. To be considered for this year’s list, all candidates had to be under the age of 30 as of April 9, 2024, and never before named to an 30 Under 30 North America, Asia or Europe list.

Candidates were evaluated by a panel of judges featuring Josef Aschbacher, director general of the European Space Agency; Johanna Bergman, head of strategic initiatives at AI Sweden; Deepali Nangia, partner at Speedinvest; and Stefan Woxström, senior vice president of Europe & Canada at AstraZeneca.

Donnelly isn’t the only innovator on the list trying to make it easier to get access to care. There’s also Charlie Bullock, 28, and Oliver Knight, 27, cofounders of Scan.com, which is a marketplace where patients can find and book medical imaging appointments. Dhruv Agrawal, 25, and Faith Jiwakhan, 27, cofounders of Poland-based Aether Biomedical have built a prosthetic hand and combined sensors, AI and software to make the device smarter and easier-to-use for patients. Antonia Agape Pontiki, 29, a teaching fellow at King’s College London, is also transforming prostheses by using 3D printing technology to make them patient-specific. This includes prosthetic ribs to help rebuild chest walls after surgery, as well as artificial organs that can be used by medical students to practice on without requiring cadavers.

Other list makers are tackling women’s health issues, an area that has historically received paltry investment dollars despite women making up half of the global population. With Spain-based The Blue Box Biomedical Solutions, Judit Giró Benet, 27, aims to tackle the breast cancer screening gap among women aged 20 to 49 by developing a tabletop device that uses AI to analyze biomarkers in a urine sample. Emilė Radytė, 29, and Alex Cook, 26, cofounded Samphire Neuroscience to develop a non-invasive device that looks like a headband, which delivers small electrical pulses to the brain for women experiencing pain or mood disorders during menstruation. With BoobyBiome, Sioned Jones, 29, and Tara O’Driscoll, 29, want to help babies and mothers who have challenges breastfeeding by developing a formula supplement from breast milk containing key microbiome species.

Honorees on this year’s list also include those doing scientific research, like Anqui Wang, 29, whose research into membrane materials aims to help produce longer-lived, less expensive batteries. Then there’s Emanuele Aucone, 28, who’s using drones to track wildlife in hard to reach places. Speaking of hard-to-reach places, Hanne Biesmans, 27, is developing electrodes that can assemble themselves inside the body in order to treat certain conditions. On the other end of the spectrum, Albert Sneppen, 25, studies the entirety of the universe, looking for answers to questions about how black holes work and how galaxies evolve.

Probably the biggest technological advance of the past couple of years is artificial intelligence, and there are plenty of applications for AI in science and healthcare. Take Amine Raji, 29, for example. His company Spore Bio is using AI to detect dangerous pathogens in food before they hit the market. Then there’s Robin Visvanathar, 29, whose company Ionlace is doing something similar in the body–using AI to detect tiny signs of cancer and other diseases. Meanwhile there’s CardiaTec Biosciences, cofounded by Thelma Zablocki, 25, and Raphael Peralata, 25, which is using AI to better understand the biology of the heart to develop new treatments for cardiovascular conditions.

This year’s list was edited by Katie Jennings, Ragnhildur Þrastardóttir, Katherine Wessling and Alex Knapp. For a link to our complete 2024 Under 30 Europe Science and Healthcare list, click here, and for full 2024 30 Under 30 Europe coverage, click here.