Women Entrepreneurs Fund Winner - Emily Blythe

Advanced Aviation Weather Prediction: Emily Blythe's FogCast System

The Christchurch Foundation’s Women Entrepreneur’s Fund continues its mission to close the gender gap in entrepreneurship by backing innovators like Emily Blythe, whose ideas are redefining the aviation industry.   

With a background in aviation, Emily is no stranger to the whims of weather. Fog and low visibility can cause significant danger and disruptions, grounding flights, costing airlines, and affecting millions of passengers each year. Through her work in fog dispersal, Emily identified a major discrepancy between the number of real fog events, which often go undetected, and unnecessary delays caused by false fog predictions.   

Her company, Pyper Vision, has developed an innovative fog forecasting solution to mitigate disruptions and safety risks. FogCast uses advanced deep-learning models to forecast low visibility conditions with unprecedented accuracy, lifting the fog on one of aviation's biggest operational challenges.   

Nichola Selway, Pyper Vision CSO, says that the $10,000 grant from the Women Entrepreneurs Fund will cover living expenses while they finalise their business model and ultimately transition from proven technology to a scalable global solution, helping to deliver safer skies, fewer delays, and more efficient aviation operations worldwide.  

As female innovators in aviation science and technology, these women embody the vision of the Women Entrepreneurs Fund to help get female-led ventures off the ground.  

“To be a disrupter you have to be able to tackle the challenges that no one else has the perseverance or bravery to do, and that is what really excites me […] I really enjoy being at the forefront of human understanding and discovering something new and [having] such an impact on people’s lives.” 

Congratulations, Emily and Nichola!