Barbara Paldus: Science at Stanford and business in Silicon Valley

Come to the Prague University of Economics and Business on Tuesday 8 November at 12:45, where the Neuron Foundation, in cooperation with the Faculty of Business Administration, is hosting a lecture by Barbara Paldus, ambassador and patron of the Neuron Foundation.

Barbara Paldus combines an outstanding scientist with a first-rate entrepreneur: she graduated from Stanford, threw herself into business in Silicon Valley, and today runs companies and invests in them. She has unique experience of science transfer, which is both a great challenge and a great opportunity for Czech students. Barbara Paldus will explain how science transfer works and why she in particular succeeded at it.

For the Neuron Foundation, science transfer is one of the key themes. On our platforms we bring together scientists and entrepreneurs who look to each other for inspiration and cooperation. At the same time we encourage future "transfer specialists" to take up their studies — people who stand between science and economics and are experts in the commercialisation of intellectual property.

Barbara Paldus, an outstanding scientist and successful Czech-American entrepreneur, will give a lecture on 8 November in the Vencovský Auditorium of the Prague University of Economics and Business. Between 12:45 and 14:15 she will present her own case studies and discuss the application of scientific research in business.

The lecture by the Neuron Foundation's ambassador is intended for students of all universities and their teachers; admission is free.

A visionary, a scientist, an entrepreneur and a chief executive. That is Barbara Paldus. Her career was shaped by her father Josef Paldus, a distinguished chemist and a Neuron Award laureate from 2015. Inspired by him, she graduated from Stanford with a doctorate in electrical engineering and had the opportunity to become a respected academic. But that kind of career did not appeal to her, and today she is glad she does exactly what she enjoys — offering her findings to the public for practical use, with 42 patents and companies valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars behind her.

The goal of her first company, Picarro, where she made use of her Stanford patents, was to bring absolute real-time measurement to medicine and the environment — she diagnosed breath in order to detect illness in time, and measured carbon dioxide and methane to help fight global warming. The goal of her second company, Finesse, was to reduce the impact of cancer and pandemics using optical sensors, bioreactors and other hardware and software.

"Today, at Codex Labs, I work in dermocosmetics — we are a biotechnology company devoted to studying the microbiome and to products that benefit skin care," says Barbara Paldus, who is also active in the venture capital fund Sekhmet Ventures.

Barbara Paldus has worked with the Neuron Foundation as a patron and ambassador for science transfer since 2022.