Dr Helen Xiaoqin Ma Accepts a Purple Plaque Award at the Entopia Building

12 December 2023 - Dr Helen Xiaoqin Ma, an alumna from our Women in Sustainability Innovation accelerator programme, accepted a Purple Plaque Award at the Entopia Building. Purple Plaque awards are an initiative from InnovateUK to address the gender imbalance in the UK's blue plaques by celebrating inspirational women.

“Inspiration and innovation can be born out of frustration. Frustration can lead us to creative solutions.” It was inspiring listening to Dr Helen Xiaoqin Ma as she received her Women in Innovation Award purple plaque today. She talked to us about her journey from academic, to intrapreneur then entrepreneur as well as the importance of inspiring and educating children. 

Helen was given the purple plaque for being an “Inventor of an innovative AI-driven logistics network to reduce carbon footprint in transport”. As a previous participant on our accelerator programme Women in Sustainability Innovation, Helen asked for the plaque to be erected in the Entopia Building, CISL’s sustainably retrofitted headquarters in Cambridge.

Helen is the CEO and Co-founder of Anteam, whose purpose is to provide sustainable and local ‘last-mile’ delivery services for businesses and the community. Inspired by her four-year old son's passion for the ant community in her garden and how it worked together, Helen looked for a similar solution using AI to unlock the logistic capacity within local areas to move things around.

James Cole, CISL’s Chief Innovation Officer, opened the unveiling ceremony with the following words:

“Starting a business, let alone a sustainability-focused one is hard. You’re trying to create something new and it's full of potential but also fragile and needs support. The Canopy is here to create a mutually supportive ecosystem and innovation community that shows the world that sustainability can be at the heart of successful business ventures. Anteam is a brilliant example of that. We’re so proud to host Helen's Women in Innovation Award purple plaque here and to see Anteam thriving since Helen attended our Women in Sustainability Innovation accelerator programme.”

Ashreen Seethal, Senior Innovation and Growth Specialist at Innovate UK, proceeded to present the award to Helen, praising her ability to use her platform to inspire those around her and highlighting how much of an achievement it was for Anteam to have won the award when, competing in a field of over 900 applications. 

There are thousands of blue plaques across the UK, 900 in London alone, celebrating the achievements of influential and pioneering figures. Yet, women feature on fewer than one in seven of them. The purple plaques aim to celebrate female pioneers and inspire more girls to get into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects and follow in the award winners’ footprints.1

“We’re a perfect demonstration of the sustainability ecosystem doing its job, I won’t call it luck. Me, my family, my cofounder Jacob with his family, alongside Innovate UK and CISL, we’re here talking about sustainability because we want to make a difference. I’d also like to thank the many inspirational women standing around us, such as Viola Jardon, working to make a difference too.”

Find out more about Anteam and their work on their website here, or follow them on social media here. If you would like to find out more about the CISL Canopy and some of the previous accelerator programmes we have run, click here.

1. https://www.ukri.org/news/purple-plaques-honour-women-innovators/