Speaker Bio
Sofía Ferreira holds a Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), along with a Master’s in Product and Systems Design and a postgraduate degree in Systems Engineering. She has also completed d·HEALTH Barcelona, a health innovation and entrepreneurship program based on the Biodesign methodology, offered by Biocat, and holds a certificate in Leadership in Technology Transfer for Life Sciences from UPF.
With over 18 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Sofía began her career at Sener Ingeniería y Sistemas, where she contributed to two notable medical devices now on the market. The first, AUTOPLAK, was her final thesis and acquired by Beckman Coulter, automating front-end microbiology lab processes. The second, Qrem Cytokine, is a Lab-in-a-box technology designed for producing Autologous Cytokines Rich Serum (ACRS) from patients’ blood.
After seven years, she moved to Qatar, working for four years as a Product Engineer at Sidra Medicine, a leading maternity and children’s hospital in the Middle East, where she established and led the 3D Unit, developing patient-specific anatomical models from biomedical imaging.
In 2020, and as a result from the d·HEALTH program, Sofía founded heecap, a start-up focused on developing a medical device to prevent and treat respiratory muscle atrophy in ventilated ICU patients. Through public and private grants, the startup has raised around €2.5 million.
In 2021, Sofia joined the Innovation Unit at SJD Barcelona children’s hospital, where she has been working for addressing the specific needs of children in healthcare, looking for existing solutions or promoting the development of new ones, as well as supporting the transfer of research into the market. Her entrepreneurial experience has given her a unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities within healthcare, continually inspiring her to improve patient care through collaborative, cutting-edge solutions.
Sofía is highly motivated to promote innovation that directly impacts pediatric care. Her work is inspired by a commitment to creating solutions that improve children's lives, recognizing that their unique needs require dedicated, cutting-edge approaches.