Focus on Fellows: Aditya Varna

We recently caught up with Aditya Varna at our latest in-person industry networking event in Cambridge. Aditya is a Round 9 Industrial Fellow and the Founder and CEO of Allos Ai, a company specialising in Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Mechanics.

The focus of Aditya’s Fellowship is around two areas; exploring the foundations of an artificial intelligence that can understand cause and effect and how such models might be applied most practically and usefully. The aim of the current work is to create a healthcare decision making platform that helps clinicians move away from treating symptoms to focussing on underlying causes, whilst also unlocking the current backbox nature of Ai healthcare applications.

You may have seen in recent announcements the Aditya and his team secured seed capital funding to apply causal Ai to reformulate complex small-molecule generic drugs to improve drug delivery and tolerability for patients with complex conditions. The new seed funding was awarded after demonstrating some key proof points to establish new standards of care. Impressively, Aditya received the news of the teams funding success via Starlink, whilst taking a few weeks out in the Amazon rainforest “The change in environment just gave me a new perspective. The way I thought about things…the way I was seeing the business and the way I was pitching the idea. You can have a break and still accomplish meaningful things [it sometimes helps] if you get some distance between you and the problem”.

Aditya puts a lot of his success down to the long-term nature of the Fellowship and the support he receives. “I have the advantage of having a position that’s 4 plus 3 years long. If I were doing the traditional postdoc, which is 18 months to 2 years…let’s say I spend the 1st year working on the problem and I start to [get results] but the next is 6 to 12 months just goes on finding the next position. I don’t need to do this as an FLF. I know that I have 4 years, and that allows me to plan my time better. For example, [x technology] announced something today…and that’s something that I now need to devote my attention to immediately because that’s where innovation is headed. I already had a work package going on but I know can easily move things around. Having a one-year plan does not allow you to do that.”

Aditiya emphasised the role of the Fellowship in helping him to take more risks and flex his business. “While innovation is quick, realising the benefits of innovation takes a long period of time. So, I think that’s what the Fellowship does for me. It gives me risk appetite over a long period of time, and that can’t be understated. Even though the money is not [huge], the opportunity that it enables is significant. It’s not something that you can get anywhere else”.

Aditya has already been benefitting from a range of activities on the network highlighting the recent industry event and the policy masterclasses in particular.  ” I didn’t really appreciate the value of these events until I actually participated in them. Sometimes I think the best resources are ones that you’re not aware of, but yet you’re excited and curious enough to participate in”.

Please do come long to the next industry event in Reading on the 30th September. These events are for all FLF’s inside and outside Universities who have an interest in commercialisation or are interested in understanding more about business, making connections and collaborating.