Cornel Amariei

Cornel Amariei is a renowned Romanian inventor, speaker, and entrepreneur known for creating .lumen – a startup that builds glasses that empower blind people to live a better life. He was born in a family where his parents and sister lived with disabilities, severely limiting their mobility. Growing up in such an environment allowed Cornel to understand the role of assistive technology. When he realized how little is being done for people with disabilities, Cornel had one purpose – to help. This way, .lumen became an opportunity to work on something that would soon change the world.

There are 40 million blind people today, and despite all the technological advancements, the most used mobility solutions are the walking cane and the guide dog. The guide dog is unanimously seen as a good option but has a few drawbacks: It costs between $30-$60K to train a single guide dog – and it can be a big responsibility for a blind person to provide care for such a companion. Because of this, there are only 28,000 guide dogs to 40 million individuals with visual disabilities.

.lumen offers a solution that mimics the benefits of a guide dog without the drawbacks that make it a non-scalable solution.

Previously, Cornel was known for operating as Head of Innovation in a large Automotive company. He became the first Romanian inducted into Forbes 30U30 Europe, the Global Business Hall of Fame, and JCI’s Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World for his work.