Nicole Ticea
If there are two things Nicole could credit for helping her develop the most cost-effective device for early HIV detection, she would say ‘passion’ and ‘youthful naïveté’. A teenage researcher from Vancouver, Canada, Nicole has spent the past two years building a team of co-collaborators and business partners at Simon Fraser University, a local institute, and at Stanford. She has taken her work to the national and international stage as the winner of the Canadian BioGENEius Challenge for biotechnology and was also awarded Second Place in Medicine and Health at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Nicole has adopted a business-minded attitude towards her research by founding her own company, OneWorld Diagnostics Inc., to attract investors for further product development. Nicole and her team have also applied to several grants and hope to raise enough money to see this product deployed in low-resource settings such as Sub-Saharan Africa, where the test will significantly increase infant survival rates and minimize undiagnosed HIV infection amongst adults. Outside of her research, Nicole is an avid author who hopes to cast a new light on long-repressed local issues. She is also a devout swimmer and runner who believes that physical fitness is the basis for all intellectual pursuits. Above all, Nicole is convinced that only through melding creativity and scientific thought can true progress be achieved, and thus seeks to cultivate these two aspects of her life equally.
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