Hailed by former US Attorney General of New York Preet Bharara as one of 100 extraordinary change-makers and by Susan Cain of Quiet Revolution as one of the great writers and thinkers of her generation, Emma Yang is a college freshman from New York City, a 3-time Carnegie Hall performer, TEDx speaker, MIT Solver, and the Founder of Timeless, a startup that empowers Alzheimer’s patients to stay engaged and connected to their loved ones. Since its inception in 2016, Timeless has garnered many awards and has been featured in media around the world, including Fast Company, Inc. Magazine, BBC, CBS, and South China Morning Post. In 2017, Timeless was selected as the winner of the MIT Solve Brain Health Challenge out of nearly 1,000 teams from 103 countries, making Emma the youngest Solver ever at age 13. In 2018, Timeless was named the Grand Prize Winner of the Women Startup Challenge hosted by Women Who Tech and Google. In the same year, Timeless was backed by over 100 supporters in its Indiegogo CrowdFunding Campaign – An effort to raise funds for Timeless’ development. In 2019, Timeless was recognized by Bayer as one of the Aspirin Social Innovation Award winners. Timeless has also received great feedback from the community around the world. Its demo video was widely shared on social media and has received nearly 40 thousand views. Timeless’ presence has reached America, Asia, Europe, South America, Africa, and Australia/New Zealand and articles have been written about Timeless on many different online channels (Facebook, senior websites, blogs, etc.). Timeless was launched globally in December 2019 and is available in English, Chinese, and Spanish.
An avid coder, Emma is passionate about Computer Science, Music, History, and Languages. In 2015, Emma won first place in the US and second place globally in Technovation Challenge, a global technology entrepreneurship competition for girls, out of 400 teams from more than 60 countries. In 2016, Emma was the youngest participant of the White House’s Opportunity Project, representing Wolfram Research in bringing the power of the Wolfram Language to solve problems using Open Data. In the same year, Emma was named one of New York’s 10 Under 20 Young Innovators to Watch and Crain’s New York’s 20 Under 20. On the same year. In 2017, Emma was selected as one of the 100 Faces of Impact globally by Impact Squared. In 2018, Emma was invited to be ARM’s Global Youth Ambassador, representing her generation in using technology to push boundaries & enrich lives. In 2019, Emma was selected as one of the thirty World Science Scholars in the world, a global online program that nurtures exceptionally talented mathematical minds and helps them use their skills to change the world. In 2020, Emma received the SupChina NextGen Rising Female Star Award for her early career achievement. In 2021, Emma was named one of the Top 50 Finalists of the Global Student Prize, out of 3500+ nominations from 90+ countries.
A frequent panelist and keynote speaker at national and international forums, Emma advocates for women and girls in STEM and for empowering the elderly community, a population that is underserved by technology. Emma frequently speaks about these key issues at panels and keynotes in national and international forums, such as TEDxFoggyBottom, Talks at Google, Collision Tech Conference, World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai, Women Who Code in San Francisco, and the Alibaba Jumpstarter Conference in Hong Kong, to name a few. Most recently, Emma co-founded the Wolfram Middle School Summer Camp, a summer program that introduces girls to computational thinking at a young age, with the inaugural camp held virtually in June 2021.
Born in Hong Kong, Emma is fluent in English and Chinese, and is learning Ancient Greek, Latin and French. Her goal is to speak as many languages as possible. She loves film photography, knitting, and the webcomic xkcd.
