Norah Kimathi

Focus Areas

Norah Kimathi is a robotics engineer whose work begins where exclusion ends. As co-founder of Zerobionic, she transforms ocean-bound plastic waste into solar-powered humanoid robots that deliver STEM education in sign language, dismantling one of the most persistent and silent barriers to social cohesion: the exclusion of deaf children from the knowledge systems that shape their futures.

Her conviction is foundational in that inclusion is a precondition for peace. By pioneering sustainable autonomous humanoids for sign language, she has fundamentally reoriented the assistive robotics industry around the communities it was always meant to serve, while simultaneously addressing the environmental degradation that drives conflict, displacement, and instability across the continent. Kimathi’s transformative leadership has been recognised at the highest levels; she is a recipient of the Presidential Award of Kenya, the Commonwealth Trust Honorary Award of Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and became the first African to win the Young Engineering Award at Hannover Messe 2026. Each recognition is a doorway back to the communities where the real work of inclusive societies continues.