Company leader
Merel Boers
Co-founder and Director
Nicolab
Merel Boers is co-founder and a director of Nicolab, a Melbourne, Australia and Amsterdam, Netherlands company that makes stroke imaging and collaboration software. Its StrokeViewer software flags blocked brain arteries on scans so its hospital customers can get patients to clot removal sooner.
Education
She is Dutch and has a background in medical technology. She earned a PhD in image analysis in stroke at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, graduating summa cum laude. Nicolab says she is one of nine women ever to receive the university's highest honors for PhD research, and she won its Prof Vooijs award for the most clinically relevant research.
Business
While working on her PhD at the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam, she and her research colleague Renan Sales-Barros saw a need for software that would help doctors diagnose stroke faster. They founded Nicolab in 2015, after the Dutch MR CLEAN trial proved the benefit of removing clots through a catheter, and Sales-Barros became chief technology officer.
As chief executive she launched StrokeViewer, which became a market leader in the Netherlands and spread to more than 200 hospitals, including the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. In November 2021 she won the EU Prize for Women Innovators at the European Innovation Council Summit in Brussels. "Innovation is essential to tackling big problems we face across the world," she said.
She stepped down as chief executive in 2023 and stayed with Nicolab as co-founder and director, focused on strategic partnerships and new products.