Hayat Sindi

Position: Founder and chief executive officer, Institute for Imagination and Ingenuity (i2)

Biography: Hayat Sindi left Saudi Arabia in 1991 in order to study abroad in the UK. After spending a year learning English and sitting her A-levels, she enrolled at King’s College London and earned a degree in pharmacology.

She then went on to Cambridge University, where she became the first Gulf woman to earn a doctorate in biotechnology. Sindi is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard University in the US. In 2011, she launched i2, a regionally focused foundation that aims to encourage and support entrepreneurship among scientists, engineers and technologists.

In 2012, Sindi was appointed a goodwill ambassador for the UN Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organisation (Unesco). She is a co-founder of Diagnostics For All, a non-profit organisation that aims to develop low-cost diagnostic devices to treat those who live far from hospitals and clinics.

Contact Email: hayat@i2institute.org