Marita Cheng was born on 5 March 1989 and is the founder of Robogals.
23 Facts About Marita Cheng
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Marita Cheng was named the 2012 Young Australian of the Year.
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Marita Cheng is the founder and current CEO of Aubot, a start-up robotics company.
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Marita Cheng co-founded Aipoly, an app to assist blind people to recognise objects using their mobile phones.
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Marita Cheng was named as one of the World's Top 50 women in Technology by Forbes in 2018 and was recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2016.
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On 9 June 2019, Cheng was appointed a member of the Order of Australia for significant service to science and technology, particularly to robotics.
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Marita Cheng was raised by her mother, a single parent who worked as a hotel room cleaner, in a housing commission apartment in Queensland, Australia.
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In 2007, while at university, Marita Cheng founded Nudge, a company which provided reminders by phone or text message to help people manage their prescription drug schedules.
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Marita Cheng won a prize for the best undergraduate business at the University of Melbourne and then recruited friends to start designing workshops to teach girls about robotics.
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Marita Cheng later graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering in mechatronics and a Bachelor of Computer Science.
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In 2011, Marita Cheng was awarded a Churchill Fellowship, which allowed her to visit the US, UK, Germany and Jamaica to learn about international approaches to science education for young women.
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In 2011, Marita Cheng was awarded the Anita Borg Institute's Change Agent ABIE Award.
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In November 2011, Marita Cheng was named Victorian Young Australian of the Year for 2012, and went on to be named as Young Australian of the Year.
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Marita Cheng visited China as part of the 40 Year Anniversary of Australia-China Diplomatic Relations, touring Guangzhou, Shanghai, Nanjing, Tianjin and Beijing in 2012.
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Marita Cheng delivered the closing keynote speech at the 35th World Congress of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts in Hong Kong in 2014.
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In 2015, Marita Cheng attended Singularity University's flagship 10-week Graduate Studies Program, where she founded an app that uses AI to enable visually impaired people to recognize objects, receiving TechCrunch coverage during her time at the program.
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Marita Cheng co-led an Australian delegation of 50 entrepreneurs, industry representatives and government envoys, to Israel alongside Assistant Innovation Minister Wyatt Roy in 2015.
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Marita Cheng returned to her robotics company, receiving a Myer Fellowship, and participated in the Advance Queensland Hot Desq program in 2017, relocating to Brisbane, Australia for 6 months, and the Austrade San Francisco Landing Pad in 2018, which brought her to San Francisco.
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From 2012 to 2018, Marita Cheng served on the board of the Foundation for Young Australians.
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Marita Cheng helped decide on startup investments alongside Eddie McGuire as a board member of RMIT University's New Enterprise Investment Fund, and supported the Victorian startup ecosystem as a board member of the Victorian State Innovation Expert Panel.
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Marita Cheng was involved with the Clinton Health Access Initiative as Technology Advisory Board Member.
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Marita Cheng has been profiled in Vogue Australia, InStyle magazine, and The Australian Women's Weekly for her work as a technology entrepreneur.
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Marita Cheng frequently attends events via her company's Teleport robot, using the device to meet Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex in 2018, to appear on a panel with Israel's Chief Scientist Avi Hasson, and to give a speech at Robogals' 10-year anniversary gala dinner.