Imogen Wright


Imogen Wright is a South African software developer and bioinformatician. She is co-founder and CTO of Hyrax Biosciences, a software development company specialising in DNA analysis programs.

Education

She earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Physics at Rhodes University. She then earned a Master of Science in Theoretical Physics at the Perimeter Institute in Canada. In 2015 she also earned a PhD in Bioinformatics from the University of Western Cape.

Career

In the past Wright has worked for Skimlinks. She was senior software developer and team leader at the big data startup in London. Wright also worked for the Amazon EC2 compute team as a software development engineer. She was a UWC-SANBI post-doctoral research fellow.

Awards

Wright was the 2016 runner-up for the Innovation Prize for Africa. She won the prize of $25,000 for Exatype, a piece of software developed by Hyrax Biosciences. Exatype is drug-resistance testing software for HIV-positive patients. She was also invited to, but did not attend, the five-week Techwoman program in 2016. From 2300 applicants she was one of 90 chosen women. The program was started by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2011.

Publications