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Meet Macinley Butson: The Teenage Inventor Saving Lives

So many inventions, so little time - by Harriet Sim
  • 22 Aug 2019
Meet Macinley Butson: The Teenage Inventor Saving Lives

At seven, Macinley Butson (far left, sitting) was obsessed with sunglasses, so much so that when her mum refused to buy her an 11th pair, she invented her own. It was the first of many inventions. From her parents’ garage in NSW’s Wollongong, Butson, now 18, has unveiled an assembly line of life-saving devices, from a pesticide-free snail repellent to protect her family pup, to a solar-power system that filters dirty water to make it drinkable.

macinley_butson View Profile
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Such an amazing honour to be awarded the Future Shaper award at the Marie Claire + Bumble Glass Ceiling Awards! And in joint with the powerhouse @jeanlola.h who is an activist who organised the Climate Strikes! Thank you so much to everyone who supports me in this journey 💙 And to all of the women out there, like the program said "Be the CEO your parents wanted you to marry". #mcglassceiling

Eight years after her first foray into sunglass design, a conversation over the dinner table drove Butson to solve a much bigger problem. “When Dad [who works in the radiation field] explained the problematic effect radiotherapy treatment can have on breast cancer patients, I knew I needed to help,” recalls Butson, who invented ‘SMART Armour’ to protect patients from excess radiation. After extensive testing, the SMART Armour has been approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration for practice and Butson, now studying a Bachelor of Science, is campaigning to find a hospital to undertake a pilot study.

At the marie claire and Bumble Glass Ceiling Awards, we celebrated the game changers, the trailblazers and the innovators fighting for gender equality in the workplace.

This article originally appeared in the September issue of marie claire. 

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