Daniela Blanco

Daniela Blanco is a Venezuelan-born chemical engineer and co-founder and CEO of Sunthetics. Sunthetics is a sustainable materials startup company that is seeking to move the chemical industry away from its reliance on fossil fuels, such as gas and oil. Sunthetics focuses on electrochemical processes and utilizes its own proprietary Artificial Intelligence software to increase the efficiency of reactions that are powered using electricity. In 2020, Blanco was named a Top Innovator under 35 in Latin America by MIT Technology Review. She initially wanted to study medicine after high school and become a neurosurgeon.

She moved to the United States in 2017 to attend New York University.

Career and contributions Blanco has received numerous prizes throughout her career so far, including the following: the $100,000 Technology Venture Prize at the NYU Stern $300K Entrepreneurship Challenge, the $20,000 top prize in the InnoVention Competition at Tandon, a $20,000 Stage II VentureWell grant, the title of 2019 Global Student Entrepreneur of the Year, and the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize in 2020.

Blanco was featured in the 2021 documentary Own the Room co-directed by Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster. The film follows five student entrepreneurs competing in the 2019 Global Student Entrepreneur Awards with the finals taking place in Macau, China. Blanco, representing the United States, won the title of Global Champion with its accompanying $100,000 grand prize.

Recognition

2022, Rising Star in Sustainability 2021, Forbes 30 Under 30 on its Energy list 2020, MIT Technology Review award for Top Innovator under 35 in Latin America 2020, Top Graduate Inventor by Lemelson-MIT 2019, Global Champion at Global Student Entrepreneur Awards 2019, named Brightest AI-CI Mind by the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence 2018, New York Student Entrepreneur of the Year