Bringing matters to a head

Ms Tan Le (BCom(Hons), LLB(Hons) 2000)

Photo courtesy Australia Unlimited

Reproduced with permission from Australia Unlimited

Technology entrepreneur and former Young Australian of the Year Tan Le had a childhood that had a huge influence on the person she is today. Her experience as a refugee from South Vietnam in 1982 gave her the courage to take risks, which has led her to start the San Francisco-based Emotiv Life Sciences, now her third company in the technology space.

Le was just four when she fled Vietnam in a boat with her mother, aunt, uncle, grandmother, and younger sister. Her mother kept a bottle of poison with her in case pirates boarded the boat, a common occurrence at the time. If that happened, she was going to make everyone in her small family, including herself, drink it.

"My childhood and experience as a refugee is a really big part of who I am today," Le says. "To start from nothing shapes your perceptions about risks and makes you always want to give things a go. Nothing I do now compares to those life-threatening risks that my mother took and I grew up with an acute perception of the sacrifices she made."

Taking risks is not something that phases Le, now 34, which is why last year she started Emotiv Life Sciences – a bioinformatics company focused on identifying biomarkers in the brain for mental and other neurological conditions including early autism detection and the cognitive effects of epilepsy.

Le is passionate about helping people with brain disorders. She says more than two billion people are suffering from brain-related illnesses such as depression, epilepsy, learning disorders and Alzheimer's, and the global cost for treating these conditions is US$2 trillion each year. She says while all kinds of medical tests are carried out on infants and young children looking for early signs of disease or developmental problems that can be cured more easily when caught early, there are no tests for brain development.

"Researchers at Emotiv Life Sciences are pursuing the dream of widespread brain function screening to catch early signs of autism, epilepsy, learning disabilities and ADHD," Le says. "One of the biggest challenges is being able to measure brain activity in a non-intrusive way. My previous company, Emotiv Systems, has developed the hardware to do this and at Life Sciences we will be collecting the data to help achieve it."

"I didn't want to be on the sidelines and not facilitating the change. I wanted to be part of it. I knew I couldn't create but I could innovate and I wanted to be an entrepreneur."

Le adds that one of the challenges is that there is probably lots of brain data lying around in hospitals but no way to connect it. "We want to converge these opportunities using cloud computing and an inexpensive imaging tool," she says. "If you can find the biomarkers that point to mental disorders early enough, you can introduce early intervention. Experts say autism develops within the first five years of your life, so if we can spot signs of it within the first two years then we can take action. Easy intervention can make a huge difference."

Emotiv Life Sciences has eight staff who are focused on development work and collaborating with hospitals to collect data. Sourcing funding for her work will be the next major challenge for Le, but at the moment she is spending most of her time on collating data.

A defining characteristic of Le is her passion for technology. She left a safe career in law to start a technology venture with a student she met when she was giving a talk as Young Australian of the Year. In 2000, Le was delivering a speech at the University of Melbourne when Nam Do, who was studying business and information technology, approached her. Do and Le got on so well they started the company SASme. Their initial idea was for small barcode scanners that could be built into mobile phones that let consumers aim their phones at products and get a text message listing product information and price comparisons.

While telcos weren't interested in the barcode aspect of the development, they liked the high-speed text messaging capabilities. Le and Do sold licences for the software and included a clause that gave them five cents for every message handled by the system. Within a few years their software was handling 150 million messages a month. In 2002, they sold the company and went looking for new opportunities.

The two teamed up with scientist Allan Snyder and chip designer Neil Weste to form Emotiv Systems in 2003, a neuroengineering company based out of San Francisco. Emotiv developed a breakthrough interface technology for digital media that takes inputs directly from the brain, and as a result released the world's first consumer neuro-headset called EPOC. The headset allows players to control game-play with their thoughts, expressions and emotions and works by using a set of 16 sensors to tune into electric signals naturally produced by the brain.

Le says the applications for the Emotiv technology and interface cover a wide range of industries including gaming, interactive TV, everyday computer interactions, smart homes, medicine and robotics. The technology is now used in 90 countries.

"What I was most proud of at Emotiv is the transformation in people's lives after the product was released," Le says. "People talk about the number of units sold, but it is nothing compared to seeing the changes in people's lives. There was one woman who had been in a car accident and hadn't moved for 10 years. Over time, using the Emotiv headset, we saw her begin to move her neck and to start smiling."

Le says the headset was just an idea initially but the company worked on it for many years and all the work was definitely worthwhile. "If I'm ever feeling 'over it' I just look at the comments that people have posted about how it has helped them in their life and that brings me back to earth," Le says.

Despite Le's success, she says that she often feels like an outsider because of her background. Her family settled in Melbourne and while growing up Le felt she was living parallel lives. In one life she was a "typical Asian student" studying hard and getting good results, and in her other life she was involved with an organisation that helped Vietnamese immigrants who had trouble adjusting to life in Australia. When Le was 18, she was elected president of that organisation while continuing to be successful with her studies – beginning her degree at Monash University at 16 and later completing a Bachelor's degree in law and commerce. Le's work with the local community helped earn her the Young Australian of the Year Award in 1998. In the same year, she was voted one of Australia's most successful women under 30.

"I will continue to find things I'm most passionate about and they will always be things close to my heart that have a positive impact on the world."

"I still feel like I'm in a bit of a parallel universe," Le says. "I always feel a bit like an outsider and this has been a common thread throughout my life. During my time as a teenager it was more pronounced as I led a very sheltered life where my mum didn't want me to go on sleepovers or school camps. My life is more balanced now, but in terms of not belonging, that has been a very consistent feeling."

Another constant theme in Le's life is the desire to make a difference and this is one of the main reasons she moved into technology. "I felt it was the most impactful way I could make a difference," she says. "I use the analogy of living through the industrial revolution and not being a part of it – why would you do that? Back when I first got into technology, the world was going through a transformative stage. I didn't want to be on the sidelines working as a lawyer and not facilitating the change. I wanted to be part of it. I knew I couldn't create but I could innovate and I wanted to be an entrepreneur."

Since being named Young Australian of the Year, Le's work has led to numerous other awards and accolades. She has been a special ambassador to Britain as a guest of the British High Commission and Foreign Commonwealth Office; a goodwill ambassador for Australia in Asia; and a patron of the Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development Program. She has been an ambassador for the Status of Women since 2001, and has also worked on a number of boards including Plan International Australia, Australian Citizenship Council, National Committee for Human Rights Education in Australia, and RMIT Business in Entrepreneurship. She was also a speaker at TED in 2010 where she discussed the work of Emotiv Systems.

Despite her many achievements, Le's mother keeps reminding her daughter that she is still young and has many more productive years left. "I will continue to find things I'm most passionate about and they will always be things close to my heart that have a positive impact on the world," Le says. "My experiences have made me realise what counts is what you are passionate about. You need to find it and wake up knowing that your day involves doing things you have a passion for."