By Ritu Jha-
Madhu Stemmermann was a chemical engineer but found her calling as an entrepreneur, using her background to power her understanding of her work.
Stemmermann is CEO of SunRay Scientific, a company that makes electronic materials found in flexible wearables, diagnostic patches, diagnostic surgery devices, and automotive for the interior of automobiles – such as sensors for autonomous driving and smartphones.
Stemmermann, who earned her engineering degree at Purdue University, had noticed the sharp growth in the semiconductor market and the drive to bring electronics back to the U.S.
“I always wanted to take the jobs that women had never been in,” she told indica. “I looked for those opportunities where either I was the youngest or the first female because I have a passion for doing things that women have not traditionally done. And as I grew professionally, I took up many roles in over 10 companies that included engineering, operations, sales, and product management. I knew one day I would be a CEO. People often would ask me why I didn’t start my own company.” So she did.
Born in Canada, Stemmermann was five years old when her family migrated to the U.S.
Her father Dr. Sarwan Kumar Khanna was a PhD in materials science from India. He first worked in England, then in Canada, and, finally, the U.S. It was one of his projects that provided her the idea to realize her dream of becoming an entrepreneur.
“My father had a material, but couldn’t scale it. I came in and helped him do that,” she says. “We took his technology that was in the R&D stage and … now we’re going into all these different applications. A big company, Molex, has qualified our technology for high-volume production. Now the next step is to get into products in the field.”
Stemmermann says she wants to eliminate dependency on China for electronics and bring it back to the U.S.
Our technology is a catalyst,” she says. “It’s much simpler in operations, it’s more automated, and you don’t need as many people, which is the reason that everything went to China – for cheaper labor. The push for electronics manufacturing in the U.S. is very good for our company. It helped us grow.”
Stemmermann’s company is now looking at working on surgical devices. One project involved a continuous glucose monitoring device.
The team is coming up with comfortable, wearable applications and flexible surgical devices. It’s working on a smart label that companies like Costco and Walmart can use to monitor the temperature of stored food in real time and thus be assured of consistent quality.
According to Stemmermann, only SunRay Scientific has the skills to make those miniature electronics while still keeping costs low.
She says she particularly likes working on applications in the health care sector.
“That will help people,” Stemmermann explains. “Basically, we’re enabling electronics to be affordable and available everywhere so that anyone can buy it and [do] great things, such as improving health care diagnostics to save lives. I have a passion to see technology work and get out in the field.”
The company also works with industry behemoths, such as Raytheon, Boeing, and others like them. After establishing a client base in the US and Europe, Stemmermann now wants to enter the Indian market.
“We are working with a couple of companies in India,” she says.
Asked about the challenges she has to face as a woman storming male-dominated sectors, Stemmermann says: “Sometimes I feel like my voice is not being heard. If my male colleague says the same thing, it’s heard differently. Sometimes I think that people feel that I’m not technically competent enough. They think there’s no way I could be the CEO. But, I’ll also say that I have many great male champions who lend a helping hand and make many great things happen. I’ve met many helpful women and men who help each other out.”
