WoW Woman in Health Tech I Dr Emilia Molimpakis, Neuroscientist, CEO and co-founder at Thymia

Dr Emilia Molimpakis is a neuroscientist with a PhD in Neurolinguistics from UCL. She is also the co-founder of the health tech platform, Thymia. Emilia is passionate about making mental health as objectively measurable as physical conditions - and removing the stigma attached to mental illnesses.

Thymia is a diagnostics platform that can be used by clinicians and patients to accurately assess and monitor depression. Inspired by video games, it uses Neuropsychology and Linguistics to pick up on subtle markers of depression that might otherwise be missed. The platform secured a pre-seed raise of $1.1m earlier this year and is expanding rapidly to support clinicians and patients across the UK, Europe, and the US. In anticipation of its launch, Thymia’s tech is currently being trialed by thousands of patients and in partnership with UCL and King’s College London. The trials are enabling the team to expand their datasets and fine-tune the tech, in order to assess a wide range of cognitive disorders in the future. 

Emilia, tell us a bit about your background and your projects so far.

My expertise lies at the intersection of Neuroscience, Linguistics, and Experimental Psychology. I have a Ph.D. in Neurolinguistics from UCL and have spent time over a decade as a researcher, focusing on how differences in cognition are reflected in language comprehension and production. 

Alongside working on my first post-doc, I worked for a gaming company. Using my background in Neuroscience, my job was to understand and tweak how players interacted with video games in order to keep them entertaining and challenging. This experience is what first sowed the seed in my mind for Thymia. 

To bring my idea to life, I joined Entrepreneur First: an accelerator programme in London. There I met Dr. Stefano Goria, a theoretical physicist and multimodal machine learning expert, the perfect match for my skill set, and together we combined our expertise to found Thymia.

How did you get into this industry? Has it been an easy industry to get into or have you had many challenges?

My first gateway into tech was working for a gaming company. Starting my own tech company was admittedly a huge leap from there and from academia, but also an easy move in that it made perfect sense. I could see very clearly that more accurate means of assessing mental health were needed to improve outcomes for patients, but I could also see a clear solution and I was determined to realise it. Tech offered a vehicle for that solution: a digital tool that clinicians and patients could use to see accurate results quickly and track their progress much more objectively than with the classically used subjective questionnaires. 

But coming into the industry as a young woman and an academic hasn’t been without its challenges. It’s no secret that female founders struggle to raise the same funding as their male counterparts - indeed, in 2020 only 2.3% of all VC funding was given to female founders; women are frequently locked out of professional networks, and often struggle to have their ideas and authority taken seriously. I have been asked more than a few times what will happen to Thymia if I decide to start a family, whereas my co-founder never faced those sorts of questions. It has been quite the journey, but it is without a doubt a most worthwhile mission and the best thing I have ever done.

What are your biggest achievements to date?

Aside from raising large funding round and successfully building out our platform with a small team, the studies we are running in partnership with UCL and King’s College London mean that after all our hard work to get the platform to this point, we’re finally seeing Thymia in the hands of thousands of patients and healthy individuals. The amazingly positive response we’ve had from trial participants means a great deal. After all, they’re the ones we created Thymia for, and the people at the forefront of our minds as we continue to meticulously refine our models but also the user experience of our platform. Getting here feels like a huge achievement already. But we won’t stop until Thymia is the gold standard for assessing and monitoring not only depression but every other cognitive disorder as well. This tool should be in the hands of every single person out there wondering about their mental health. In January we are going live with large clinics across Europe and we cannot wait.

What are the projects you are currently working on?

Earlier this year we secured a pre-seed raise of $1.1m. Things have been moving really fast ever since. Our team has grown to 10 people now and leading clinics across the UK, Europe, and beyond are joining us all the time, so we’re constantly expanding to ensure we can reach as many patients and clinicians as possible. Our models are language-agnostic, so we are very proud to be able to roll out our platform in several countries and languages at once.

Alongside our commercial progress, a long-term project we’re working on is scaling our technology to cover cognitive disorders beyond depression. We’re already gathering data around Alzheimer’s Disease, Lewy Body Dementia, Parkinson’s Disease, Anxiety, and ADHD, and each trial brings us a step closer to being able to accurately assess them all. 

Is the #WomenInTech movement important to you and if yes, why? 

Of course. It is absolutely essential that we have industry representation if we are to drive innovation around issues that affect women. But the #WomenInTech movement should be important to everyone. Growing up, I would have loved to see more examples of women in STEM and tech to inspire me and I aim to be that inspiration for other young women by giving lectures across universities as well as talks in girls’ schools. We know that diverse teams make for more creative thinking and more effective solutions, so it makes no sense that women only account for 17% of the UK’s tech workforce. Just imagine what we could achieve if women - and all marginalised groups - had better representation. 

What will be the key trends in your industry in the next five years and where do you see them heading?

Our healthcare system is under huge strain right now, and demand isn’t letting up any time soon. Despite cases of depression has more than doubled since the start of the pandemic, psychiatrist numbers have been steadily dropping; demand for mental health support has outstripped supply for decades; mental health services and clinicians need all the support they can get to help meet that demand. 

Innovation in the field of mental health will be a particular focus in the coming years, both on the assessment, but also on the treatment side. People are waking up to the fact that a mental health condition is as real as any physical health condition, but we still have a way to go to improve how we diagnose and treat such conditions. Platforms that improve mental health diagnosis - and enable healthcare professionals to treat and monitor patients outside of clinics and in-between appointments - will continue to appear and scale rapidly. At the same time, intriguing new approaches to treating depression, such as using psychedelic microdosing, are also set to proliferate. It is a very exciting time to be joining this movement revolutionising the mental health landscape.  

What is the most important piece of advice you could give to anyone who wants to start a career in this industry?

Tech is fast-paced and hugely competitive. Breaking into the industry and carving out the early phases of your career is especially demanding. My advice would be to ensure you have a clear purpose from the outset and, if starting your own tech business, ensure you also have a strong differentiator from your competition. Having a clear purpose will be key to keeping you grounded and driving you forward, even when the going gets tough. Even more importantly, however, it is absolutely essential to always put your own mental health and wellbeing first, no matter what ‘unmissable’ networking opportunity comes up, and regardless of what work is piling up. Burnout is a real thing, especially in the beginning, and it creeps up on you fast, so stay one step ahead by always carving out time for yourself and what you love to do outside of work.

Who are three inspirational women in your respective industry you admire?

Maru Nihoniho is the founder of a game design and development studio based in New Zealand. Having done a lot of work around gamifying cognitive behavioural therapy as an intervention for young people, our interests are closely aligned. Maru is also doing important work in raising awareness for Maori culture in her country - she’s an impressive woman! 

I also really admire Meri Williams, who is currently CTO at drug discovery startup, HealX. She is not only an experienced technology leader, having previously worked with the likes of Monzo but also a prominent advocate for diversity in tech. 

Having joined the tech scene from politics and law, Reshma Saujani’s background is quite different from my own. But as founder & CEO of the non-profit Girls Who Code - whose mission is to close the gender gap in tech - she’s most definitely an inspiration.

Find out more about Thymia on their website.

Connect with Dr. Emilia Molimpakis on LinkedIn.

This interview was conducted by Marija Butkovic, Digital Marketing and PR strategist, founder, and CEO of Women of Wearables. She regularly writes and speaks on topics of wearable tech, fashion tech, IoT, entrepreneurship, and diversity. Follow Marija on Twitter @MarijaButkovic and read her stories for Forbes here.