At 13, she taught herself programming. And ever since the robotics club in middle school captured her interest, her vigor for driving pivotal change and solving hard technical problems, has been unstoppable.

By 15, her technological bandwidth expanded to machine learning and blockchain. From developing platforms to track counterfeit medication in developing countries to reducing the cost of prosthetics, she was deservingly awarded the “Young Innovator to Watch” by the Consumer Technology Association.

Today, Alisha Imran continues to invent the future at age 18. Her passion? Exploring the intersection between significant problems and the cutting edge technology that can solve them. She manifests this through three key roles: She is the Co-founder at Voltx, a developer at Hanson Robotics, and a Machine Learning Intern at Kindred.ai.

Voltx is a machine learning company that is developing software to accelerate research and development testing of energy storage devices, including batteries and supercapacitors (SC). Hanson Robotics is an AI and robotics company dedicated to creating socially intelligent machines that enrich the quality of our lives. They are the creators of Sophia, the human-like robot. At Kindred.ai, she will be developing more intelligent machines using cutting-edge techniques in reinforcement learning (RL) and imitation learning.

What is the PROBLEM that Voltx is solving?

Innovations from electric and flying cars to solar panels are enabled by lithium ion batteries. In the development of these batteries and supercapacitors, testing is the primary bottleneck. For example, long duration manual testing for a lithium ion battery can take 3 months to a year to complete. Industry competitors are working towards the next best battery with the highest energy density output, but no one is optimizing the development process. Therefore, batteries are currently unscalable. Companies can’t increase their production and renewable energy can’t be sustained without these massive energy storage systems.

What is Voltx’s SOLUTION and VISION?

A software platform to reduce battery testing time.

This will exponentially expedite the development process of batteries. Voltx aspires to collaborate with battery manufacturing companies to increase the number of devices they’re producing annually. Eventually, these applications will allow renewable energies to be more stable and reliable for widespread use and application. Electric vehicles will become more accessible to the masses, improving the environment through less carbon emissions.

Alishba Imran’s LinkedIn

Alishba Imran’s Twitter

Alishba Imran’s Email

Voltx’s Website

Voltx’s LinkedIn

Visit inventingthefuture.ai for the full show notes, which includes a full transcription of the conversation, a link to the YouTube Video interview, the top 3 value bombs, people & resources mentioned, and more!

This podcast is hosted by Julian Alvarez, the Co-Founder & CTO at Vize and a Software Engineer at Facebook.