British Mensa member presented
with International Intellectual Benefits Award

British Mensan Melissa Sterry is the Mensa Foundation’s 2010 winner of the International Intellectual Benefits Award for her development of the Bionic City, the ultimate sustainable smart city that uses knowledge about Earth's ecosystems to create a metropolis with resilience to extreme meteorological and geological events.

Melissa is the founding director of multi-award-winning sustainable innovation think tank and laboratory Societás, which, since 2004, has become internationally recognized for its work developing groundbreaking new sustainability initiatives in design, media and the visual arts. Clients include FTSE 100 companies, leading national and international NGOs and first-to-market start-ups.

Melissa’s latest initiative is New Frontiers, an initiative to promote innovation through design education in the UK. Focused on the built environment, it brings together sustainability leaders from design, architecture, engineering, urban planning, chemistry, materials science, ecology, policymaking and media to create interdisciplinary collaboration. The initiative is rolling out seminars, workshops, scholarships, pilots, living labs, interactive exhibits and a prestigious biennial national prize.

Melissa has sat on sustainability and social enterprise steering groups, non-executive boards, panels and committees for many organizations including WWF and the International Design Awards. She is the winner of several national and international awards for innovation and enterprise.