10-24-2021 Women to Watch - Flipbook - Page 14
PHOTO BY LLOYD FOX
ANDREA PAIS
37, co-founder and CEO, Novel Microdevices
Growing up in South India, Andrea Pais saw
firsthand the need for portable, rapid testing for
all sorts of illnesses — especially in remote areas
of the country, which she said sometimes are days
away from the nearest hospital.
It drove the 37-year-old Baltimore-based entrepreneur to co-found Novel Microdevices in 2015
and begin developing a testing system, Novel Dx,
for sexually transmitted and respiratory infections. In April, her startup received a $13.8 million investment from CARB-X, a global nonprofit
that researches and develops preclinical products
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against drug-resistant infections.
Novel Dx could one day be available, Pais hopes,
to test for everything from antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea to COVID-19, especially for women and
underserved communities from Baltimore to her
hometown, Belgaum, in the state of Karnataka.
“A device like [the one] we are developing
could go a long way in making health care diagnostic testing more accessible in those parts of the
world,” Pais said.
Pais moved to Maryland in 2009 after attending
graduate school at the University of Florida. Now a
resident of Ridgely’s Delight, she has lived in Baltimore since 2017.
Her talents are not limited to rapid molecular
diagnostics: Pais is an award-winning songwriter.
Between her previous job at Columbia-based
SB Microsystems and launching Novel with her
brother, Pais spent two years pursuing a career in
music.
Her original piano ballad, “Chasing Forever,”
won an award in the Songwriters Association of
Washington’s 2013 Mid-Atlantic Song Contest. The
video has racked up 5,500 views on her YouTube
channel, which also features covers of The Beatles
and Whitney Houston.
“Music and engineering are somewhat closely
related, in my opinion,” she said. “Both of them involve a similar type of creativity.”
— Colin Campbell