Helene Steiner is a design engineer that works at the intersection of technology and science. She co-founded Open Cell with the mission to lower the entrance barrier to biotechnology by providing affordable lab space to early-stage startups. She has supported over 100 startups since 2018.
She co-founded Cell-Free Technology, where she developed computational and biological design tools for proteins while leading the biomaterial platform at the fashion department at the Royal College of Art.
Helene worked as a researcher at Microsoft Research Seattle and as a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, collaborating with the computational biology group. Her research included flexible displays and new concepts for the future of biological labs.
She has been hosted as a visiting researcher in the Tangible Research group of the MIT Media Lab. She holds an MDes from the Bauhaus University, an MA from the Royal College of Art and an MSc from Imperial College London.
Helene has been awarded a Frontier of Science, Kavli Fellowship by the National Academy of Sciences, is a committee member of the Synthetic Biology SRI at Cambridge University, and has received over 20 international awards. Her work has been exhibited worldwide, including at the Centre Pompidou, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna.