Herbalogi.AI is comprised of a world-class specialist team from various fields spanning engineering, computer science, pharmacy, and biotechnology. In the Herbalogi.AI spotlight, we sit down for Q&A session with some of our experts. In this first session, we asked our Founder and President for some insight:
What do you work on at Herbalogi.AI?
I am the founder and president of Herbalogi.AI. My main job is to keep the company running smoothly and according to the vision set by the founding team, and of course, to generate returns for the investors.
What was your background before founding the company?
I am an aerospace engineering graduate of the University of Manchester, UK. I did my PhD in the field of scramjet engine performance measurement by manipulating chemicals that are sensitive to oxygen thereby allowing us to quantify pressure inside the engine.
I started my career in academics as an assistant professor, first at the Malaysian defence university and later at Brunei’s national university. It was in Brunei that I started looking into using AI as part of computer-aided drug design. It was by an invitation of my neighbour who was a professor of pharmacy at the same university. He knew that I am a self-taught AI engineer and he asked me if we could use AI for drug design. I studied a few publications and downloaded various open-source algorithms related to the field. Then we both looked into incorporating the same methodology for the naturally derived drug.
Can you share your experience in working with AI?
As I mentioned earlier, I am mostly self-taught in the sense that I learn from reading blogs, watching tutorial videos, and subscribing to a few online courses. I obtained the IBM AI Engineering professional certificate after I completed a 9-month course through Coursera. I have published a few journal articles where I use machine learning and AI to model haze, scramjet engine performance, and IoT network traffic identification. I have given professional training and AI consultation through various partner institutions. For that, I have been recognised as a Chartered IT Professional by the British Computer Society, The Chartered Institution for IT (UK).
What inspired you to form this company?
Many circumstances brought this company into existence. As I have shared earlier, I am originally an aerospace engineer, but I ended up doing AI, both professionally as an academic and also as a hobby. I like to read and try different algorithms found on the internet. That’s the best thing about AI, the community has mostly taken the open-source philosophy to heart. There are plenty of codes to play with in GitHub and other machine learning blogs. With that said, I have this growing passion for using AI in new fields, and testing new frontiers; I like being challenged by new problems. So, when my neighbour asked me to help him to implement an AI system for naturally derived drug design, a new obsession grew within me.
What makes your company different from your competitors?
We are definitely not the first company to work on AI-assisted drug design, whether in synthetic or natural drug design. There are not many such companies, but they exist. Some work on the protein folding or docking aspect. Some focused on the ligand discovery from synthetic chemical space. Some also work with natural ligands like us. But what truly set us apart is that most companies offer their services to big pharma such as Eli Lilly, GSK, Pfizer and others; but we focused on producing our own health products and natural medicines. Of course, we as a start-up couldn’t do everything on our own. Like for example, we could not invest in our own biotech laboratory, or do clinical testing or manufacture products in our own factory. Thus, we rely on partners, to outsource our lab or clinical testing and to manufacture our products. We imagined ourselves like Apple the tech company. They design their products in their HQ in California, but they outsource their parts manufacturing, testing and assembly at other factories. So, they can focus on what they do best, designing lifestyle electronic products. Essentially, that is what Herbalogi.AI is; we design health products using AI to help create a formulation that can precisely deliver its health promise.