Luminoma aims to make skin cancer screening objective, accurate and broadly accessible

Maher has over 20 years experience commercialising medical devices and diagnostics. He was previously a Director, Business Development at Orbis Diagnostics as well as ResApp Health,  where he built and managed partnerships with several global pharmaceutical companies before ResApp was acquired by Pfizer. As a management consultant at McKinsey & Co.'s London office, Maher advised medical device, pharmaceutical and healthcare organisations on strategic and operational change. Maher also worked with clinicians and scientists to establish two medical device startups whilst investing from the University of Cambridge's Seed Funds.

Dr Michel Nieuwoudt is Chief Scientific Officer of Luminoma Diagnostics Ltd. She also holds a position as Senior Research Fellow in the School of Chemical Sciences at the University of Auckland. Her research focuses on the use of vibrational spectroscopy (Mid-IR, NIR and Raman) and chemometrics to analyse, investigate and characterize a variety of different materials for application in medical diagnostics, dairy research, art conservation, environmental conservation, anthropology and pharmaceutical product development. Her current interest is the development of portable photonic sensors that use vibrational spectroscopy for in vivo or in situ measurements of skin and human tissue, and the use of chemometrics and machine learning for analysis of the spectral data. She obtained her PhD in Physics with a focus on Physical chemistry from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa in 2012.

Hannah's research has focused on using Raman spectroscopy to solve commercial problems. Her first experience with Raman spectroscopy was working for Orbis diagnostics, following which she completed her MSc in Chemistry researching Raman spectroscopy as a tool for rapid quantification of milk components. Since then she has worked on a number of spectroscopy based projects in the Photon factory at the University of Auckland, with applications for medical devices and marine aquaculture, before working on skin cancer from 2020. Over the last 6 years she has gained experience in multivariate data analysis of spectroscopic data, as well as significant practical experience in the use of Raman for measurement of biological samples. She joined Luminoma in August 2023.

Hannah’s research experience and interest focuses on the use of vibrational spectroscopy for medical applications. Over the past 8 years, she has gained expertise with a variety of different spectroscopic techniques; including many different Raman modalities, FTIR imaging and NIR spectroscopy. During the completion of her MSci Natural Sciences and PhD Physics studies at the University of Exeter, she focused on the use of Raman spectroscopy for cancer diagnosis, with a specific focus on the development, design and building of fibre optic probes. She started at the Photon Factory as a postdoctoral research fellow in 2023, and joined Luminoma in 2024.

Samuel has  expertise in software development, GUI construction and hardware integration with multiple Languages including C++/C#. He has delivered software projects for Health Physics Services for the purpose of calibrating medical equipment as well as Thought Wired on the development of bioelectric interfaces for clients with disabilities.

Samuel has a BE(Hons) Mechatronics at Massey University and a MMedicalEng Medical Devices and Technologies from the University of Auckland, where he focused on the development of clinical devices for patient assessment. He subsequently joined Luminoma in 2024.

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Associate Professor Locke is the President of the New Zealand Association of Plastic Surgeons and the Deputy Head of the Department of Plastic, Reconstructive and Hand Surgery at Middlemore Hospital, Auckland. Her training has focused on breast reconstruction, skin cancer treatment and microsurgery at centres in New Zealand, the United States and Canada. She is one of only a few female Plastic Surgeons in New Zealand and has provided clinical guidance to Luminoma's scientific founders since their first clinical study

Fully trained at the University of Auckland School of Medicine, Assoc/Prof Locke has completed advanced surgical training in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery with the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, where she undertook two years of full time research to obtain a Doctorate of Medicine (MD) along with her surgical qualification (FRACS) in 2010. She is currently an Associate Professor of Surgery at the University of Auckland Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.

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Dr Robin is a consulting expert immunopathologist with over 37 years experience and a keen interest in medical technology. Previously, he was the Medical Director at Dermtech Inc. where he led the development of the first non-invasive genetic test for melanoma. He also served as the president of Pacific Rim Pathology Medical Group and Chairman of the Pathology Department at Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego, California.

He received his M.D. degree and residency training at Jefferson Medical School, in Philadelphia. He was a research fellow in Molecular Immunology at Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation and is board certified in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology and Immunopathology.