🧬 Week 6: AI for Drug Discovery — Tunisian Female Founders Are Rewriting the Script
Empowering Women in Deep Tech From Tunis to the lab bench to the cloud—these women aren’t just decoding molecules. They’re decoding bias, access, and who gets to innovate.
Let’s talk about the kind of brilliance that doesn’t always make headlines: Women in Tunisia using AI to accelerate drug discovery, reduce clinical trial costs, and democratize access to life-saving treatments.
They’re not waiting for permission. They’re building platforms that predict protein interactions, simulate compound efficacy, and challenge the pharmaceutical status quo.
💡 Why Tunisia? Why Now?
A rising hub for biotech and AI convergence
Strong STEM education pipeline with women leading the charge
Global partnerships with ethical research labs and open-source data communities
These founders are blending:
North African resilience
Global scientific rigour
Feminist tech ethics
And they’re doing it with fewer resources, more grit, and a whole lot of strategic brilliance.
🧠 What Makes Their AI Different?
Bias-aware algorithms: No more training models on data that excludes women, minorities, or rare diseases.
Open-access platforms: Because life-saving insights shouldn’t be locked behind paywalls.
Community-first design: Built with local researchers, not just for global pharma giants.
They’re not just optimising molecules. They’re optimising equity.
✨ Lessons from the Lab (and the Startup Pitch Deck)
You don’t need a billion-dollar budget to innovate—you need clarity, courage, and clean data.
Feminine intelligence in biotech means asking: “Who gets healed first?” and “Who gets left behind?”
AI for drug discovery isn’t just about speed. It’s about who we’re designing for—and why.
🧪 TechSheThink Challenge:
If you could design an AI model to solve one health equity issue, what would it target?
Rare diseases?
Hormonal health?
Mental health in underserved regions?
Let’s build it. Loudly. Ethically. Together.
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