Shefali is an award-winning product designer who, while still a student, helped devise a revolutionary device for women to undertake self-checks to aid in the early diagnosis of breast cancer.
Shefali and her team are the brains behind Dotplot – a device which means women can check themselves simply by using the gadget against the breast to create a personalised map of the torso using soundwaves to monitor for lumps. The information is recorded on an app and the data can be compared from month to month to see if any changes occur.
The idea came about after the Imperial College, London students discovered how information recommending women to undertake self-checks was contradictory and confusing and that there were no products on the market to help women do a self-check at home.
Together with her fellow-students who were all on Imperial College’s Innovation Design Engineering Master’s course, their innovatory design won the UK leg of the international James Dyson Award in 2022. This is an award open to college students or recent graduates to design something that solves a problem. The device also won the 2022 Venture Catalyst Challenge which is Imperial’s largest entrepreneurial competition for students and alumni.