From aerospace engineer to entrepreneur: One woman’s work to help bladder pain, chronic UTI sufferers

Ana Timoficiuc spent her early career building things that defied gravity. With an aerospace engineering degree, she worked as a mechanical and harness design engineer in the aerospace industry — including for SpaceX suppliers — and was accustomed to solving difficult problems. 

One of the most difficult problems she came to face was a personal one affecting her own body. 

Today, Timoficiuc is the CEO and founder of MinaRosa Technologies, a Detroit-based women’s health company developing a red light therapy device for urogenital and pelvic pain. It’s a category of suffering that impacts millions of women, including Timoficiuc, yet it’s also one the Western medical establishment has historically dismissed, largely due to established biases, gaps in training and the biological complexity of the conditions themselves.

After years of recurrent urinary tract infections that conventional doctors had done little to resolve, Timoficiuc began experimenting with red light therapy on herself. One day, she accidentally dropped the device. It left a two-inch burn.

"I got so angry," she recalls. "I could do this better. And as soon as I said it, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I definitely can.’" For someone trained to build things that solve practical problems, that instinct was less a leap than a reflex. "Engineering is a mindset. You look at information, figure out what's missing and put two and two together."

Timoficiuc is methodical with the science. She collaborated with a microbiology lab at the University of Michigan Medical School, ran a supervised pilot study with a Harvard urologist and recently reached an exciting milestone. 

“We will be running our first clinical study through Harvard, through our Harvard urologist,” she said. “He's going to be using his affiliation as a researcher and as a urologist through Harvard and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston to really put this to the test.”

During the pilot study, Timoficiuc said one participant who had been living with chronic bladder pain for five years canceled a scheduled bladder removal procedure after 30 days of red light therapy. 

“It didn’t cure her,” Timoficiuc was careful to add. “But it improved her quality of life such that she didn’t go through with the surgery anymore.” 

She is equally clear-eyed about what she does not yet know, and her overarching goal. “I have no ego in this. My dedication is to helping women,” Timoficiuc says. “So if we find out that it barely helps, or it’s like a placebo, then I will be moving on to the next thing because I’m not married to the technology. I’m married to the issue.” 

That commitment is most visible in how she talks about patients. Across more than 200 customer discovery interviews, the common thread Timoficiuc has encountered isn’t just pain — it’s shame. Women have been told their bladder problems are their own fault, a product of poor hygiene or a lack of care. During the pilot study, several participants were embarrassed to even use the device, which resembles a small, handheld mat that’s pressed to the lower abdomen, in front of their husbands. 

“You’re in pain. This is something that can help you,” she says. “Every single time it comes up, it does not cease to impact me.” 

When asked what she hopes MinaRosa helps change for women in five years, Timoficiuc’s answer is simple: “I hope it’s obvious to them what solutions are there — like when you get a cut and you have 10 different Band-Aids to choose from. Right now, that gap is vast.” 

Timoficiuc intends to close it. 

MinaRosa Technologies is based in Detroit, Michigan. To learn more about MinaRosa’s research or its community advocacy panel series called the Wonder Woman Project, follow the company on Instagram and LinkedIn.