Impact Prize winner Alexandra Grigore on co-founding the innovative start-up Simprints, which began life in the Gates Cambridge Scholars Common Room
This prize is testament to how the seeds planted at the start of my time as a Gates Cambridge scholar can yield some amazing fruit.
Alexandra Grigore
Alexandra Grigore [2012] is the Chief Strategy Officer and Co-Founder of Simprints, the world’s first open-source biometric ID platform with privacy at its core.
The company has now reached over three million people across 17 countries and anticipates that impact will increase tenfold in the next years. In the 10 years since it started, Alexandra has worked with partners including the International Committee of the Red Cross on safe digital ID cryptography and with Gavi on breakthrough biometric algorithms to ensure children receive vital vaccines. The impact of Simprints’ work can be seen, for example, in a 38% increase in maternal health visits in Bangladesh and a 62% boost in accurate HIV tracing in Malawi.
Alexandra has pushed the boundaries in her research at Simprints. It was previously thought impossible to take biometric information from children under five, but she led the delivery of a digital tool that is sensitive enough to biometrically identify children from six months old. This is groundbreaking in international development, as it means children without birth certificates or formal ID can now be identified from a very early age, unlocking access to healthcare and immunisation programmes. Globally, one in four children goes unregistered at birth. In Bangladesh, this new technology has been used across 50 clinics.
Starting up
Alexandra co-founded the non-profit company at Cambridge with two fellow Gates Cambridge Scholars, Toby Norman and Dan Storisteanu and Toby’s brother Tristam. Alexandra met Toby and Dan in her first week at Cambridge during the Gates Cambridge orientation. Although she shared their passion for social enterprise, having been to a talk on it as an undergraduate in Romania, she was initially not particularly interested in joining Simprints. At that point it was more about identifying the need for an identification system that links with mobile medical records than about developing a practical solution. The lack of a reliable ID system meant doctors in many of the poorest regions didn’t know, for instance, which children had received vaccinations and which hadn’t.
By her second year, everything changed. Alexandra, who was doing a PhD in Nanotechnology, agreed to work on a student competition with the Simprints group and that experience persuaded her that she wanted to join the team. She had been working on sensors for diagnostics in developing countries and had planned to remain in academia, but she realised the impact of that work would take decades to reach fruition. She could see that Simprints would have a much more immediate impact. She says: “Cambridge and Gates Cambridge brought the Simprints team together and gave us the opportunity to combine technology and social enterprise and to create something that was really impactful. That’s the beauty of meeting people from diverse backgrounds.”
For the first 18 months the team met in the Gates Cambridge Scholars Common Room every Sunday to work on developing Simprints, which launched in 2015 and celebrates its 10th anniversary in February. Several Gates Cambridge scholars volunteered for them in the early days. Alexandra’s role was to develop the hardware and the first product the company developed was hand made by her.
Since then Simprints, which now has 48 full-time staff and several part-time and freelance workers, has created safe and ethical biometric tools for use in everything from health to humanitarian aid, enabling more people to have access to healthcare and other support. In the Covid pandemic, for instance, the company worked with the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office to explore how biometric technology could be responsibly leveraged to support pandemic response efforts.
From engineering to strategy leader
While many biometric tools exist on the market, few serve the world’s most vulnerable populations. Simprints tools have empowered NGOs and governments to provide essential services to millions of people worldwide.
Until recently, Alexandra was leading a team of engineers who are developing machine learning-based biometric recognition models trained explicitly for under-represented demographics, especially in low- and middle-income countries, including places with no internet connection. The team was also exploring the application of cutting-edge research in privacy-preserving biometrics to ensure the safety of people’s biometric data.
After coming back from maternity leave in late 2024, Alexandra was appointed Chief Strategy Officer and is leading on partnerships and working across other teams, including the product design team, to influence international development work and promote what Simprints calls ‘verified impact’ – that is, accurate data on who and who hasn’t received vaccinations or other medical help. The aim is to reach more people and have a greater impact. Alexandra adds that when it comes to partners Simprints is looking for “champions who understand the value of accurate data”.
After diversifying into other areas last year, Simprints will be doubling down on its work on health and digitisation this year, collaborating mainly with ministries of health. Alexandra says that, post-Covid, there is renewed urgency when it comes to health digitisation and preparing for future pandemics.
Role model
Being at Simprints has given Alexandra big opportunities to grow and develop her skills, even from the offset as she didn’t have a background in hardware engineering. In her new role she will be honing her leadership and communications skills.
Alexandra’s impact doesn’t stop there, though. An inspiring role model for female engineers, she makes time for mentoring other women and hopes that the intersection of technology with social impact could attract more into the field.
Her work also extends beyond Simprints itself. She has been instrumental in releasing Simprints’ code as open source, meaning its tools can be used as a digital public good in the future. Alexandra, who sits on the Advisory Board of the Modular Open Source Identity Platform, has also shared her knowledge and expertise with peer organisations and the wider biometric sector.
Alexandra’s expert insights have also led to the creation of Simprints’ Responsible Biometric Deployment Handbook – the most comprehensive guide of its kind in the sector. The Handbook explains the technical and operational aspects of deploying biometrics, how to choose a vendor, what the key considerations during a deployment should be and what the potential risks are. Simprints says the release of the handbook was ‘a game-changer’ in reshaping how biometric technologies are applied, especially in low-resource environments, and transforming how practitioners, NGOs and governments approach biometric identification projects, with an emphasis on impact and safety.
Sustainability is also at the forefront of Alexandra’s work. This approach is evident in the rugged design of Simprints’ fingerprint scanners, which are built to withstand harsh environments, reducing the need for frequent replacements and minimising operational costs.
In addition, Alexandra, who works closely with organisations ranging from ID4Africa and the Data Use Community to Cambridge Judge Business School, has been a driving force in developing Simprints’ hybrid business model, which combines the principles of a non-profit with the mission of a social enterprise. By forging partnerships with NGOs, governments and private-sector stakeholders, Simprints generates revenue that sustains ongoing research and development. This business model ensures that Simprints is not reliant on a single revenue stream, contributing to its long-term sustainability and ability to drive change in global health and development.
Alexandra is delighted to have won the Impact Prize. She sees it as recognition not only for her work, but for the role of Gates Cambridge in bringing together scholars from different backgrounds with a shared aim of improving the lives of others. She says: “This prize is testament to how the seeds planted at the start of my time as a Gates Cambridge scholar can yield some amazing fruit. Gates Cambridge was so important in the creation of Simprints and its values are our values.”
