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Into the lab and beyond

During those years, Furnell also successfully applied for funding to transform an unused room in the 91ɫ��Ƭ Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences building into a student common room, managing an $80,000 budget while still a student.

“I remember thinking, ‘I wish there was a place where I could just be on campus and have my own room to study,’” she says.

“So, I applied for a grant to set up a student common room – and I got it.”

Under her guidance, the empty room became a fully renovated communal student space, complete with a kitchen and shared facilities.

That moment seems to be an early example of how Furnell fell easily into entrepreneurship. She noticed a gap, put her hand up to address it and found a way to build a solution.

“There were just so many things that came up for me because I thought, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if this were a thing?’ and then made it my mission to make it happen,” she says.

“Almost always, someone would say, ‘Oh, good idea. Why don’t we try this out?’”

In her second year of university, Furnell and a group of friends entered the pitching competition with an idea for a rapid diagnostics company.

“We won $5000, which for a 19-year-old, felt insane,” she says.

The experience changed the trajectory of her career. It was also her first glimpse of how university ideas could move beyond coursework and into the wider world.

“And we got investment from 91ɫ��Ƭ after that for my next company,” she says.

Her Honours year then became a balancing act between academic research and entrepreneurship.

While completing her thesis – in which she discovered an – Furnell co-founded a biomaterials startup, . It was there that she began building ventures across biotechnology and sustainability, first focusing on improving access to biotechnology, then expanding into sustainable materials and energy applications.

Furnell reflects on her time at 91ɫ��Ƭ not as a straight academic pathway but as a place where she could move between the lab, student leadership and entrepreneurship.

“There were a lot of opportunities at 91ɫ��Ƭ to just step up and do stuff,” she says.

She also credits supportive academics, particularly biotechnology lecturer Honorary Associate Professor Wallace Bridge, with helping her see entrepreneurship as a legitimate path.

“He was just so enthusiastic about entrepreneurship,” she says.

“He even offered us space in his lab.”

At the time, the momentum felt exciting. But the further Furnell moved into biotechnology and deep tech, the more she began to see that scientific ventures do not behave like ordinary startups.

Full steam ahead

The years after graduation moved fast. Furnell was building companies, winning awards, joining fellowships and speaking at international events.

Alongside Synbiote, she also co-founded the non-alcoholic beer company . Born out of her search for healthier non-alcoholic options, the beer became one of the first products in Australia and the United States to be truly 0.00% alcohol.

Her work quickly gained international attention. She was named a Vogue Future Innovator and recognised in the 40 Under 40 Most Influential Asian-Australian Awards. She also received a USD $100,000 fellowship through Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s 776 Foundation to support Synbiote’s climate-focused biotechnology work.

Those opportunities took her across the world for speaking engagements and innovation programs. Last year, she was part of a visiting manufacturing facilities and seeing how breakthroughs in science were being translated into products at scale.

In her current role with iGEM, she spent the first months of this year living and working in Paris.

“I didn’t really get much global exposure when I was doing my undergrad,” she says.

“But with my roles, I’ve been able to immerse myself in global ecosystems and learn how others are innovating all across the world.”

Yet as the travel, awards and investments grew, Furnell couldn’t ignore the unanswered question of how to take complex science beyond the lab, to make it manufacturable and investable.

“There were lots of issues that I came across as a founder working in deep tech,” she says.

“And I saw so many of my other founder friends coming up against the same problems.”

From chasing opportunities to interrogating the system

Unlike software startups, which can often test and refine products quickly, deep-tech ventures are built around scientific discovery and advanced engineering.

This year, Furnell stepped away from startup leadership and began her PhD at the University of Sydney Business School, focussing on the gap between scientific discovery and commercialisation.

“Typically for a business, the question is ‘can you sell the product’?” she says.

“But if you’re in science or engineering, it’s not just a matter of selling the product – it’s can you actually make the product in the first place?”

She says many existing business frameworks fail to account for the realities of deep-tech innovation, where scientific uncertainty, long timelines and expensive experimentation can slow development for years.

“And this is the problem because science can’t iterate at the speed that, say, software startups can,” she says.

Her research will explore how deep-tech ventures can bridge this divide and, hopefully, help more promising discoveries survive the complex journey from research to real-world application.

“Deep technologies will be crucial to solve the complex challenges around us, addressing this gap is how we can bring them into reality,” Furnell says.

“I’ve spent my time in the founder seat. Now I want to try and solve these problems at a more systemic level.”

A personal shift

After years in the startup space, Furnell says returning to research is giving her time to think more deeply about the systems that shape innovation.

Scientific breakthroughs, she says, do not become real-world products simply because they are clever or exciting. They need conditions that can withstand uncertainty, long timelines, technical risk – the work of making science scalable.

“I’m only a few months in, I’m super fresh, but it feels good to be able to slow down and really think things through,” she says.

“Doing a PhD is definitely a change of pace from being a founder.”

The experience is also shaping her professional work at iGEM, where she works with people building biotechnology ideas in different parts of the world.

“The reason I love working with iGEM is because they’re truly a global organisation,” Furnell says.

“Being in Australia, which is essentially a geographically isolated island, it’s so important to see what people are working on, and how, across the world.”

As for what comes next, Furnell says she does not know – and, for the first time, she is comfortable with that. She wants to focus on understanding the conditions that allow scientific ideas to thrive beyond discovery.

“I’m quite excited for what happens after this.”