When Isoken Igbinedion was 10 years old, she had a "very dangerous encounter" with chemical relaxers that caused her natural hair to fall out. She spent the next 20 years using extensions to give her hair a chance to regrow. And in that time, she realized how much friction there was in the hair products and services market. "In those 20 years, we've seen very little innovation used to improve the hair buying and installation process for customers or the manufacturing process," says Igbinedion, 30. And so the vision for Parfait came into focus, a direct-to-consumer platform leveraging AI to better customize wigs from head size to the tint of the lace front.

Marlyse is a third-year PhD student in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. She received her B.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 2017. Her current research in the Model-based Embedded and Robotic Systems Group focuses on multi-vehicle online planning, incorporating complex dynamics and constraints. She is also interested in risk-aware planning, fault protection and diagnosis, and adaptive sampling. Outside of the lab, she enjoys playing soccer, dancing, and reading science fiction.