Elizabeth Iorns

Background

Iorns was born in Melbourne, Australia, but was primarily raised in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand.

Education

She holds a first-class honors degree in Biomedical Science from the University of Auckland and a Doctor of Philosophy in Cancer Biology from The Institute of Cancer Research, a constituent college of the University of London.

Career

Science Exchange has received considerable media attention since it first launched in August 2011, particularly following its participation in the Y Combinator incubator program in Summer 2011 and its role in launching the Reproducibility Initiative in Summer 2012. Iorns has been profiled in many leading publications including Nature, FastCompany, the San Francisco Business Times and Xconomy. Iorns lives in Palo Alto, California, where Science Exchange is now headquartered.

She was supervised by Alan Ashworth and her thesis was titled High throughput functional analysis for the identification of breast cancer targets.

Iorns completed a PostDoctoral Training Fellowship at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. In 2010, Iorns was promoted to Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

Iorns" research focuses on identifying mechanisms of breast cancer development and progression. She has several high impact publications in the field

Iorns has been a longtime spokesperson on the issue of reproducibility in academic research.

In August 2012 she helped launch the Reproducibility Initiative, a program developed to assist researchers in validating their findings by repeating their experiments through independent laboratories. Iorns conceived of the idea for Science Exchange while at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. She needed to conduct immunology experiments, but had difficulty finding potential collaborators or providers to work with.

She formed Science Exchange with two co-founders (Ryan Abbott and Dan Knox) in May 2011.

In 2012 Iorns was recognized by the Kauffman Foundation for her role in starting Science Exchange. In addition, Iorns is a mentor at IndieBio, an accelerator focusing life sciences established by SOSV in 2014.

In December 2012, Iorns was recognized by Nature Magazine as one of the "Ten People that Mattered in 2012" for her role in launching the Reproducibility Initiative. In June 2013, Iorns was mentioned as one of the "50 Women Who Are Changing The World" by WIRED.

Achievements

• In 2008 she received the Young Investigator Award from the Expedition Inspiration Fund for Breast Cancer Research for her work characterizing Breast Stem Cells for the Identification of Cancer Stem Cell Specific Therapeutic Targets. Iorns is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Science Exchange. In May 2013, Iorns was named, along with co-founders Ryan Abbott and Dan Knox, as "Technical’s Most Inspiring New Founder" by SV Angel’s David Lee. In May 2014, Iorns was one of six female entrepreneurs to receive the Glamstarter Award from Glamour Magazine.