About us

Inspiration

The inspiration behind Respira Labs was our founder’s abuela, Sylvia. Maria witnessed her struggles to understand when her COPD was exacerbating. After she died, Maria decided to switch careers, so that no one else dies because of misdiagnosis.

Founder

Maria Artunduaga is a Colombian- born physician-scientist and inventor with 50+ prizes and publications in Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), Human Genetics, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) and Genetics in Medicine. She decided to leave a career in plastic surgery to found Respira Labs. She's raised $3.2M in non-dilutive and investors to bring Sylvee to market.

The name “Samay” means to “deep breath” in Quechua, an ancient language spoken in Latin America.

As a solely south American team, we wanted to connect to our roots. Unifying the world of our culture and heritage by using Samay to express who we are. Samay also means to give vigor to the body and mind, and that’s our main goal, to help users gain peace of mind and enjoy their lives.