Hardie Wren Development Initiatives

Dr. Wren founded BritCair Laboratories Ltd in 1984 with proprietary alginate wound healing technology, which she then sold to Merck & Co Inc for $30,4M in 1998. At that time, she relocated to the United States to become the Vice President for Research and Development at Merck's dermatological subsidiary. She played an integral role in the creation and development of new products from concept to regulatory approval, which has eben the focus of her scientific career.

She created The Wren Group in 1997 to provide her expertise to start-ups. Delighting in many outdoor pursuits and living by the superb alpine Lake Tahoe in Nevada, USA, she also co-founded the Tahoe Standup Paddleboards, the first paddleboard company to capitalize on the potential of this sport on the "flat waters" of lakes and the need for a displacement hull product rather than a surf board. Through her experiences as a Board member of several NGOs and nonprofit organizations, she then decided to start the Hardie Wren Foundation in the United States and the Hardie Wren Development Initiatives in the United Kingdom in 2016. These initiatives are focused on improving science literacy in underserved communities. In 2017, they awarded their first Innovations in Science Literacy (ISLA) prize to Dr Susan Nasif Obeid for her Cimaza virology Comics.

Dr. Wren has received several recognitions for her contributions including the United Kingdom SMART Award for entrepreneurship in 1986, and the White House recognition for her leadership of a Monsanto/Russian/Ukrainian research project to remove radioactive isotopes from the food chain, post-Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster in 1997.