Alumni Seminar by Dr. Naeimeh Behbood

On Friday, May 29th, Dr. Naeimeh Behbood, ICFO Alumnus and Honorary Representative for the ICFO Alumni Network, offered an Alumni Seminar to share with ICFOnians some insights on her career path to date.

Naeimeh defended her thesis on light-matter interaction at ICFO in 2015 in the Atomic Quantum Optics Group led by ICREA Prof. Morgan Mitchell. After working for 2 years in the high power laser Industry at Monocrom as a R&D Researcher, she founded Sana Meditech, a start-up dedicated to remote healthcare monitoring systems with the objective of providing IoT solutions in health care ambient.

Since you left ICFO, you have worked in industry and started your own company. Where did this motivation comes from?
This all started with the ICFO ESADE course “From Science to Business”- it had a lot of influence on me. During that course, I saw the possibility that although I have my education mostly in science there is a possibility to switch to be an entrepreneur and move to the business side. It was in the back of my mind and I thought about it quite often.

Do you think it was important to have the experience of working in a company like Monocrom before starting your own company?
I think being inside a company gives you lots of insights. At ICFO, my main concern was my scientific project, not the group’s budget or finances. But while working in Monocrom, we were taught to think about “What’s the timeline? What’s the budget? How should we manage the client?”

I think it is a valuable experience for someone who wants to start a company, because besides the technical part, there are other things to take into account for a successful business.

If you were back in ICFO, what advice would you give to yourself?
When we are in academia, we think that success is mainly achieved by becoming a post-doc, being a professor assistant and later by creating your own group. I would have informed myself about the possibilities for people with technical backgrounds in industry. Industry is also a very diverse ambient. We have people in the marketing department that need to have a technical background to understand the product better.

What sorts of skills taken from ICFO have helped you in the entrepreneurial experience?
I see ICFO as a very successful start-up. It started at a very small scale, but then it had a very big expansion in few years. When you are in an environment that is in constant growth, just by watching people doing, you learn a lot. ICFO provides you with an international community, which is a very valuable experience.