Marita Cheng, recognized as the youngest Member of the Order of Australia in 2019 and named one of Forbes’ Top 50 Women in Tech in 2018, is a prominent technology entrepreneur and advocate for women in technology. As the founder and CEO of Aubot (formerly 2Mar Robotics), she leads the development of Teleport, a telepresence robot designed to facilitate education for children with cancer, enable individuals with disabilities to attend work and provide monitoring and companionship for the elderly.

Under Marita’s leadership, Aubot has gained global recognition, receiving accolades such as Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia in 2016 and being hailed as “the coolest girl at CES 2014” by VentureBeat magazine. Marita has presented innovative Teleport technology at various international conferences, including the M.A.P. International CEO Conference in the Philippines, MIT Technology Review EmTech Singapore, and the World Entrepreneurship Forum in Lyon, France.

In addition to her contributions to Aubot, Marita attended Singularity University’s Graduate Studies Program in 2015, where she co-founded Aipoly. Aipoly developed an application using convolutional neural networks to recognize objects in real time on smartphones, assisting individuals with visual impairments. The app, launched in 2016, has been downloaded over 500,000 times and is available in 23 languages.

Marita’s commitment to promoting diversity in engineering led her to found Robogals Global, for which she received the title of Young Australian of the Year in 2012. Robogals conducts workshops and community activities worldwide to encourage young women to pursue engineering. Marita’s achievements extend to board positions in organizations like Robogals Global, the Foundation for Young Australians, and RMIT’s New Enterprise Investment Fund. She is also involved in the Clinton Health Access Initiative’s Tech Advisory Board.

Born in Cairns, Queensland, Marita overcame financial challenges to excel academically, graduating in the top 0.2% of the nation. She holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechatronics) / Bachelor of Computer Science from the University of Melbourne and is fluent in English, Cantonese, and Japanese. Beyond her professional endeavors, Marita enjoys reading, traveling, and daydreaming.

The inspiring life story of how technologist Marita Cheng built Robogals and recruited over 100,000 girls into STEM: Smart Girl Books Marita Cheng.