Daniela Blanco

Add links
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Daniela Blanco is a Venezuelan-born

fossil fuels.[3][5] In 2020, Blanco was named a Top Innovator under 35 in Latin America by MIT Technology Review.[4]

Early life and education

Blanco initially wanted to study medicine after high school and become a neurosurgeon.[3] However, she decided against this path after witnessing a surgery during a vocational internship and having a negative reaction to the sight of blood.[3] She chose to pursue chemical engineering after shadowing a chemical engineer at a Venezuelan chemical company.[3]

Blanco earned her bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from Universidad Simón Bolívar in Venezuela.[2][6]

She moved to the United States in 2017 to attend New York University.[1][3] Blanco has discussed initially feeling "so behind and so out of place" at NYU because, due to a lack of funding, the university she previously attended in Venezuela didn't have the up-to-date laboratory equipment and technology that the NYU research labs had.[3]

Blanco earned her PhD in chemical engineering from New York University in 2020.[7]

Career and contributions

Blanco has received numerous prizes throughout her career so far, including the following: the $100,000 Technology Venture Prize at the NYU Stern $300K Entrepreneurship Challenge, the $20,000 top prize in the InnoVention Competition at Tandon, a $20,000 Stage II VentureWell grant, the title of 2019 Global Student Entrepreneur of the Year, and the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize in 2020.[8]

Blanco was featured in the 2021 documentary

Global Student Entrepreneur Awards with the finals taking place in Macau, China.[11] Blanco, representing the United States, won the title of Global Champion with its accompanying $100,000 grand prize.[11]

Blanco has contributed to research papers, including these:

Number Title Number of citations Year published
1 Controlling Selectivity in the Electrochemical Reduction of Acrylonitrile: Towards a Solar-Driven Nylon 6, 6 Production Process 2018
2 Trends Chem. 2019, 1, 8–10; g) A. Wiebe, T. Gieshoff, S. Möhle, E. Rodrigo, M. Zirbes, SR Waldvogel 5 2018
3 Optimizing organic electrosynthesis through controlled voltage dosing and artificial intelligence 91 2019
4 Organic electrosynthesis for sustainable chemical manufacturing

DE Blanco, MA Mo

61 2019
5 Enhancing selectivity and efficiency in the electrochemical synthesis of adiponitrile 42 2019
6 Enhancing Organic Electrosynthesis through Artificial Intelligence: The Case of Adiponitrile Electrohydrodimerization 2019
7 Design Guidelines for Membrane-separated Organic Electrosynthesis: The Case of Adiponitrile Production 2019
8 Process Intensification Approaches to Organic Electrosynthesis: Towards Sustainable Nylon Production 2019
9 Enhancing Organic Electrosynthesis through Artificial Intelligence: The Case of Adiponitrile Electrohydrodimerization 2019
10 Design considerations of sunlight-driven organic electrosynthetic processes 2019
11 Insights into membrane-separated organic electrosynthesis: the case of adiponitrile electrochemical production 22 2020
12 Controlling selectivity in the electrocatalytic hydrogenation of adiponitrile through electrolyte design 15 2020
13 Effect of electrolyte cations on organic electrosynthesis: The case of adiponitrile electrochemical production 14 2020
14 Enhancing Selectivity and Energy Conversion Efficiency in Organic Electrosynthesis 2020
15 Spearheading the Electrification of Chemical Manufacturing with Smart Organic Electrosynthesis 2021
16 Enhancing Performance of Organic Electrosynthesis through Electrolyte Engineering and Mass Transport Control 2021
17 Electrohydrogenation of nitriles 2022
18 Systems and methods for integrated solar photodialysis 4 2023

Sunthetics

Blanco co-founded Sunthetics, along with fellow NYU graduate, Myriam Sbeiti, and NYU professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Miguel Modestino.[12][8]

The idea for Sunthetics was born while Blanco was a PhD student at NYU working on her PhD thesis.[3] Her goal was to find a way to efficiently power chemical reactions using electricity rather than heat which relies on the burning of fossil fuels.[3] She was initially focused on applying this idea to part of the development process for the widely used material, nylon.[3] When faced with a lack of interest from Nylon manufacturing companies, the Sunthetic's co-founders decided to pivot their companies focus to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms behind the process.[3] The AI tools that had been developed were the key to making the renewable energy driven chemical reactions as efficient as possible.[3] Blanco also found there was significantly more interest in the AI technology she and the Sunthetics team had developed and it was this technology that could be applied to many different industries.[3] Sunthetics now focuses on further developing and perfecting that AI-driven machine learning platform.[3] As of 2022, Sunthetics has six employees.[3]

Recognition

Personal life

Blanco was raised in Venezuela by her mother, Maria Eugenia Blanco.[3]

She credits her resiliency and motivation, in part, to her Venezuelan upbringing stating: "...Venezuelans are always incredibly optimistic. They focus on what is going right. They laugh at the things that are not going so well."[3]

Blanco credits a science experiment she witnessed during her preschool class as being the source of her initial inspiration to become a scientist.[3]

She currently lives in Temple, Texas.[15]

References

  1. ^ a b Wright III, George (June 26, 2021). "Daniela Blanco, Founder of Sunthetics – Driving Change in the Chemical Industry, One Reaction at a Time". Valiant CEO.
  2. ^ a b c "Daniela Blanco | Lemelson". lemelson.mit.edu. Retrieved 2023-07-02.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s "A sustainable pivot". United States Patent and Trademark Office. Retrieved 2023-06-18.
  4. ^ a b c "Daniela Blanco (Venezuela)". MIT Technology Review (in Spanish). 2020-11-24. Retrieved 2023-06-22.
  5. ^ "Miguel Modestino". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2023-07-01.
  6. ^ NYU Web Communications. "Student Profiles - Class of 2020". New York University. Retrieved 2023-07-02.
  7. ^ a b "Daniela Blanco". NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Retrieved 2023-06-17.
  8. ^ a b "Ph.D. student Daniela Blanco adds to her already lengthy list of prizes". NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Retrieved 2023-06-18.
  9. ^ Costantini, Cristina; Foster, Darren (2021-03-12), Own the Room (Documentary), Alondra Toledo, Daniela Blanco, Henry Onyango, National Geographic Documentary Films, Saville Productions, Shopify Studios, retrieved 2023-06-18
  10. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 2023-06-18.
  11. ^ a b Disney+ Original Own The Room Co-Directors Share Secrets Of Their New Documentary, retrieved 2023-07-01
  12. ^ Martinez, Chenelle Bonavito. "I Am a Scientist – Should I Be an Entrepreneur?". The New York Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 2023-06-22.
  13. ^ "Forbes 30 Under 30 2021: Energy". Forbes. Retrieved 2023-06-18.
  14. ^ "Profile". Global Student Entrepreneur Awards. Retrieved 2023-07-01.
  15. ^ "Co-founder of Sunthetics calls Temple home". KWKT - FOX 44. 2021-06-25. Retrieved 2023-07-02.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Daniela_Blanco&oldid=1217959479"