Ainura Sagyn
Ainura Sagyn
Student of Vision Abie Award Winner
Award Description:
The Student of Vision Abie Award recognizes and celebrates an undergraduate or graduate student who has a unique vision of how technology innovation can solve important problems, and how inspiring more women in technology enables meaningful innovation.
The Student of Vision is passionate about impactful technologies or inspires others to help build them.
Sponsored by Discover Financial Services.
Ainura Sagyn:
MS Candidate in Computer Vision, Autonomous University of Madrid
Born in a small mountainous region of Kyrgyzstan, Ainura earned a full scholarship to study computer science in the capital, Bishkek. A Regional Ambassador of the Technovation Global Challenge since 2018, she has conducted Coding Camps and Coding Caravan trainings in all regions of Kyrgyzstan to teach the basics of coding to more than 2000 young girls from rural areas.
Ainura has made a dozen appearances in Kyrgyz media, has given talks at the UN’s Women’s Day programming in Kyrgyzstan, and is recognized in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia as a vocal advocate for women in STEM.
She is the founder of the startup Tazar, an app and website that addresses plastic waste. Through the Tazar app and online platform; institutions, businesses, and individual consumers can sell or donate clean recyclables to independent recycling processors. Ainura aspires to integrate computer vision and robotics into Tazar. These advances would allow computer programs within robot hands to recognize and retrieve recyclable waste in recycling centers.
Ainura is currently enrolled in a Master’s program in Computer Vision, a natural next step for her career, doing cutting-edge research in Computer Vision, and at the same time learning how to incorporate the technology into a successful and impactful start-up.