Michal Mor

Company: LumenTitle: Co-founderIndustry: TechnologyNotable in 2024: Mor expanded Lumen's reach to more than 300,000 consumers and 100 health clinics. The data collected contributed to groundbreaking research that found a distinct correlation between women's metabolic health and critical hormonal shifts.

Being an elite athlete and being on top of personal health and personal nutrition are inseparable when it comes to aiming for success. For Michal and her twin sister Merav, add in Phds in the field of physiology and there is a recipe in the making for some innovative thinking on how to improve daily fitness and long-term health. The dual Ironman winners co-founded Lumen, which offers a handheld device that can measure metabolism in a single breath, as a way to offer individuals a new way to manage and improve diet, weight loss, sleep, workouts, energy level, and lean muscle mass building.

What looks like it could be a vape is anything but – a personal version of medical equipment that was previously only available in a clinic or hospital. It is still using the underlying metabolic test science, called an RER, which measures the CO2 in breath using a sensor and flow meter, but the approach by which Lumen captures that information in a breath is a novel development. As Lumen itself says, the science is the same, but the technology is better and more accessible.

It's been a decade-long journey for the Mor twins and their additional co-founders who brought R&D expertise to the table, from initial development and funding from notable Israeli tech entrepreneurs in 2014 through a breakthrough Indiegogo crowdfunding platform campaign in 2018 that raised $2.3 million.

For Michal, the company's success was unexpected but reflected a deep desire she had always held.

"I've always wanted to work in the field of medicine, but found my strengths in the world of research and tech. I fell in love with the idea of tackling a problem and hypothesizing about it. All this while I was training for the Ironman and trying to understand how to better fuel my race together with my twin sister Merav, of course," she told WeAreTechWomen in an interview. "Between training for the race and the world of research, I found a problem worth solving. Suddenly I found a gap between the science world of nutrition and our daily lives – how come we know so little about what fuels our bodies? Ultimately, being an entrepreneur is like research, you need to dig and find the answers to find a problem worth solving for many."

Since its initial crowdfunding success, its appeal has cut across demographics, with coverage spanning from Wired to Marie Claire, Men's Health, Entrepreneur, Webmd, and Fox and Friends.

The company has raised multiple rounds of venture funding, including a $62 million Series B in 2022.

The company has taken over 65 million metabolic measurements to date, according to its data, to offer users what it boasts as "daily nutrition and lifestyle guidance, backed by the biggest metabolic database on the planet."

The CO2 measurements that can be taken each morning over a period of weeks provide a snapshot of how an individual's metabolism is working, and through identification of whether your body is using carbs or fats, provide personalized health, diet (including intermittent fasting) and lifestyle recommendations.

Its research activities are ongoing, and have included studies with the University of Toronto, Purdue University, Colorado State University, San Francisco State, as well as universities in Europe and Australia.