Samantha Ouyang
Superposition Toronto Founder & Executive Director
Toronto, Canada
Samantha is a 17 y/o from Toronto working to empower women in STEM and create global impact with emerging tech. As a blockchain researcher and developer taking special interest in its potential for social impact, she has built a number of decentralized applications (dApps) on Ethereum, worked as a smart contract developer at a global fintech company, and conducted research on smart contract evolution at UWaterloo. Some of her projects included a land registration dApp to secure property rights in developing countries and a dApp to help with the lack of transparency in the pet industry. Another was BISECT, a permissioned blockchain framework to secure Industrial Control Systems and prevent cyberattacks on power plants. She also created BIØS, a framework to combat bias in AI that won top 3 worldwide and landed her the opportunity to present her idea to 90+ members at S&P Global. At ViewFin, she worked on integrating The Graph into the company's token exchange platform, researched digital identities, and spearheaded her own project there to prevent child labour in the chocolate supply chain. A recent project involved using blockchain and nitric oxide IoT sensors to drive blood donation transparency and reduce blood loss during transportation, which won 2nd place in a global hackathon and the Best Pitch award. Since beginning her journey in blockchain, she has also spoken about her work on The Irish Tech News Podcast, a panel hosted by the Canadian Blockchain Association for Women called "Women in the New Economy," and hosted a fireside chat with the organization's executive director. Spurred by hurtful experiences in the past as a female interested in technology and engineering, she is also the Founder & Executive Director of Superposition Toronto, a non-profit dedicated to bridging the gender gap in STEM that has reached 33K+ individuals in 83+ countries. She has also won international and national awards in chemistry olympiads, received top prizes in global and national hackathons and innovation challenges, earned seed funding for her moonshot project using polysaccharide aerogels for water purification, been interviewed in a number of magazines and podcasts, been awarded DMZ Woman of the Year, and received a place on the Future 25 Under 25 list.