Women leading deep tech: six founders from the EIC Women Leadership Programme 2026

Turning laboratory breakthroughs into companies that can scale internationally requires leadership skills that go beyond scientific excellence. The European Innovation Council Women Leadership Programme brings seasoned coaches, mentors and networking to women researchers and founders as they move from discovery to products, customers and clinical trials. Below are six founders from the 2026 cohort whose companies illustrate how European research talent is being commercialised across health, digital infrastructure, industrial water, and sustainability. The profiles include funding milestones, institutional partnerships and technology summaries while noting where claims require independent validation.

Diane-Laure Pagès, Co-founder and COO — Orakl Oncology, Paris, France

Orakl Oncology combines fresh tumour-derived biological material with multimodal clinical data and machine learning to create virtual patient models intended to predict how cancers respond to therapies. The company is initially focused on colorectal and pancreatic cancers. Diane-Laure Pagès, an engineer by training, leads partnerships, legal operations and organisational development. Orakl emphasises hospital collaborations with institutions such as Gustave Roussy and AP-HP to secure tumour samples and matched clinical histories that feed its predictive models. Orakl has raised nearly €15 million from investors including Singular, Speedinvest, HCVC and Verve Ventures. It also received an EIC Accelerator Seal of Excellence.

Elena Callegari, Co-founder and CEO — SageWrite, Reykjavík, Iceland

SageWrite builds AI tools tailored for scientific writing and research workflows. The product aims to transform notes and drafts into publication ready manuscripts while preserving an individual author voice and recommending relevant literature. Elena Callegari holds a PhD in Linguistics and has academic experience in Natural Language Processing and large language models. SageWrite was selected by Women TechEU and is at pre seed stage. Its differentiator is a ResearchTech focus rather than trying to compete as a general purpose writing tool.

Iliane Rafaniello, Co-founder and CEO — Surphase, San Sebastián, Spain

Surphase develops sensor technology to monitor reverse osmosis membranes used in desalination and industrial water treatment. Continuous, real time detection of fouling allows operators to intervene earlier, reduce chemical cleaning, lower energy consumption and extend membrane life. Founder Iliane Rafaniello holds a PhD in Applied Chemistry and Polymers and has led membrane fouling research for a decade. Surphase secured €2.5 million from an EIC Accelerator award as part of a broader €3.5 million financing plan and has entered seed stage with initial commercial traction.

Ingrid Verbauwhede, Co-founder and Chief Scientist — Belfort Labs, Leuven, Belgium

Belfort Labs is developing custom semiconductor and accelerator technology to enable computation on encrypted data so that sensitive information never has to be decrypted for processing. The approach addresses a growing need for privacy preserving analytics in finance, defence, healthcare and trusted AI deployments. Professor Ingrid Verbauwhede, from KU Leuven's COSIC group, brings decades of cryptographic hardware expertise. Belfort builds on ERC Advanced Grants and a DARPA project that contributed core know how. The company raised a €5 million seed round led by Vsquared Ventures with participation from prominent technology figures and also received EIC Transition funding.

Meritxell Teixidó, CEO and CSO — Gate2Brain, Barcelona, Spain

Gate2Brain is developing peptide based delivery shuttles designed to transport therapeutic cargoes across the blood brain barrier. The company is pursuing paediatric brain tumours for its lead candidate G2B-002 which has orphan designations and is progressing toward Phase I/IIa trials targeted for 2028. Meritxell Teixidó co-founded the company as a spin off from IRB Barcelona with collaborators at the University of Barcelona and Hospital Sant Joan de Déu. Gate2Brain has received €2.5 million through the EIC Accelerator, support from Fundación Botín and Banco Sabadell and an additional €7 million to accelerate clinical development.

Nađa Dizdarević, Co-founder and CEO — Coolect, Zagreb, Croatia

Coolect offers an AI powered platform that automates ESG and sustainability reporting to comply with European regulation such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards. The software guides data collection and generates standards compliant reports much faster than manual processes. Founder Nađa Dizdarević combines legal training, energy economics experience and clean tech entrepreneurship. She co founded RenewXchange, a digital marketplace for corporate power purchase agreements, and was part of the Women TechEU Top 40 list in 2025.

What the EIC Women Leadership Programme does and why it matters

The EIC Women Leadership Programme is an EIC Business Acceleration Services initiative launched as a pilot in 2021. It combines cohort based trainings, one to one mentoring, business coaching and networking to help women researchers and founders strengthen leadership skills and scale ventures. By 2026 nine cohorts and over 300 participants had taken part. The programme runs separate researcher and entrepreneurial tracks to fit different maturity levels.

A critical perspective on claims and scaling risks

The six profiles showcase technological depth and strong institutional links. At the same time claims in press material and company sites should be examined against independent validation. Examples to watch include: prospective clinical predictiveness of AI models that must be shown in blinded, ideally external trials; ASIC or encrypted compute performance that needs reproducible benchmarks versus standard compute; and peptide transport approaches that require human safety and exposure data before clinical efficacy can be assessed.

Common scaling risks across these ventures include obtaining repeatable, standardised access to regulated datasets or biological samples; navigating complex regulatory pathways especially in health and biotech; attracting follow on capital for capital intensive device, hardware or clinical programmes; and demonstrating measurable cost savings for industrial buyers to displace incumbent processes. The EIC ecosystem provides valuable de risk mechanisms but private capital, commercial pilots and third party validation remain decisive for market traction.

What to look for next

Follow up indicators to assess progress will include prospective clinical or field trial results, publication of independent benchmark data for encryption hardware and performance, scaled commercial pilots with large water operators, and growing recurring revenue for software platforms such as Coolect and SageWrite. Watch also for strategic corporate partnerships and follow on funding rounds that demonstrate investor confidence beyond grant stage support.

Why this matters for Europe

These companies underline a broader European strength in translating academic excellence into deep tech. They also show persistent structural needs: more venture capital in deep tech verticals, better mechanisms for sharing and standardising clinical and industrial datasets, and continued support for leadership development among underrepresented groups. Programmes that combine funding, coaching and market access help close the gap between invention and scalable impact. The examples above are promising but will succeed only if technical claims are validated and commercial channels scale.

If you are an entrepreneur or researcher interested in the EIC Women Leadership Programme or the EIC Business Acceleration Services, monitor open calls on the EIC Community platform and subscribe to the EIC BAS newsletter for updates on applications, events and partner opportunities.