About the Innovator

Nivatha Balendra has always been fascinated by science. In the eighth grade, she began participating annually in science fairs in Montreal, with her later projects focusing on the efficiency of ethanol as an antibacterial agent and the feasibility of Isopropanol as a safer, more effective alternative. The devastation of the Lac Megantic disaster motivated her to find environmentally friendly biosurfactants that could be used to clean up oil contamination. As a high school student, she collected samples of soil to analyze for bacteria that could produce surfactants. She enrolled at McGill University, where she continued her research, but shifted focus from environmental mediation to replacing surfactants derived from petroleum or palm oil. She founded Dispersa in 2019 during her undergraduate studies at McGill University. The catalyst, being selected as one of 6 finalists for Canada’s first Women in CleanTech Challenge, which came with over $1M in funding and business support to scale ideas into a growing business. In 2021, Dispersa patented its BioEterna microbial fermentation technology which was used to produce biosurfactants derived from food waste, the first of its kind globally.