San Franisco-based Mendel.ai, a startup that is developing an artificial intelligence-powered platform to match people with cancer to clinical trials, has raised $2 million in seed funding from DCM Ventures, BootstrapLabs, Indie Bio, LaunchCapital and SOSV. Medel.ai will use the capital to forge partnerships with hospitals and cancer genomics companies to bring the system into use.
Network tech titan Cisco is working with TomTom to research and develop what the two are calling an “ultra-fast lane level traffic technology” that supports autonomous driving.
Cisco already operates in the connected transport realm, offering a range of sensors, controllers, and routers that connect systems to improve things like traffic flow. With TomTom on board, the duo plan to carry out research to leverage Cisco’s roadside data and create the “next generation of traffic information technology,” according to a statement issued by the companies. This initiative will be underpinned by Cisco’s Internet of Things (IoT) platform.
There are undeniable, extraordinary benefits to living in a world that’s more connected than ever before. In medicine and healthcare alone, there is a near-limitless opportunity.
But as connectivity brings us closer together, it’s also generating a sea of information that will soon exceed human comprehension. That means more important insights will be lost in endless exabytes of inaccessible (dark) data — unless we tag in some sophisticated artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence is already being put to use in the NHS, with Google’s AI firm DeepMind providing technology to help monitor patients. Now I have discovered that Google has met with Genomic England – a company set up by the Department of Health to deliver the 100,000 Genomes Project – to discuss whether DeepMind could get involved.
If this were to happen, it could help bring down costs and speed up genetic sequencing – potentially helping the science to flourish. But what are the risks of letting a private company have access to sensitive genetic data?
Listen to Andreas Koukorinis, founder of UK sports betting company Stratagem, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that soccer games are some of the most predictable events on Earth. “They’re short duration, repeatable, with fixed rules,” Koukorinis tells The Verge. “So if you observe 100,000 games, there are patterns there you can take out.”
The mission of Koukorinis’ company is simple: find these patterns and make money off them. Stratagem does this either by selling the data it collects to professional gamblers and bookmakers, or by keeping it and making its own wagers. To fund these wagers, the firm is raising money for a £25 million ($32 million) sports betting fund that it’s positioning as an investment alternative to traditional hedge funds. In other words, Stratagem hopes rich people will give Stratagem their money. The company will gamble with it using its proprietary data, and, if all goes to plan, everyone ends up just that little bit richer.
University Data Science News
UW Seattleannounced it will be home to the new Allen Discovery Center for Cell Lineage Tracing with a grant of $10m over four years, expandable to $30m over 8 years. The center’s work is expected to have impacts across “developmental biology, neuroscience, cancer biology, regenerative medicine” and beyond.
Computer Science undergrad enrollments have grown dramatically in the last eleven years according to a new survey: “sixty percent of academic units surveyed more than doubled their enrollment” since 2006. Unfortunately, the number of women and black/African American CS graduates is even lower than in 2003. [sigh] However, departments that report making an effort to increase diversity among graduates have more diverse graduating classes. If you are reading this and you work in a CS department, please see it as your responsibility to find diversity initiatives that work for you. Harvey Mudd CS has set an excellent example.
Niels Birbaumer at the University of Tubingen has made huge strides in the field of robotics, working on projects that allow quadriplegics to control robotic arms through brain signals. Birbaumer is now warning that the science has vastly outpaced ethics and security protocols, demanding attention be paid to cybersecurity defenses to prevent hacking into people’s brains (damn good idea), instantaneous overrides to curtail a robotic limb gone rogue, and admonitions to reign in scientists if they over-promising on the kinds of results patients can expect. Go, Niels!
Aviv Regev of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, MA is using single-cell RNA sequencing to probe 2400 immune cells. She already found several dendritic cells with T-cell stimulating potential. What does that mean? Those dendritic cells could possibly be nudged into action via ‘vaccine’ as a prophylaxis against cancer. Cancer vaccine? Cancer vaccine!!! This ounce of prevention sounds way better than a pound of cure (e.g. surgery, radiation, chemo). And I am way ahead of myself – there is no cancer vaccine yet.
In a brave op-ed in Nature News, psychologist Simine Vazire argues that scientists are letting their ’eminence’ get in the way of their science. From my interviews with young scientists across a range of fields, there are heaps of silent agreement out there.
My NYU officemate Bruno Goncalves and his co-authors have shown that “American English is the dominant form of English outside the UK and that its influence is felt even within the UK borders” using Google Books and twitter data. I shall make no snarky comments about America and our speech mannerisms, much as I may be tempted.
Duke University has enrolled its first research subject in an ambitious new kind of health study that aims to collect as much data from participants as possible over 4+ years. Building on historical long term studies like the Framingham nurses’ study, and alongside the soon-to-launch Kavli Human Project at NYU, Duke (in partnership with Google’s Verily and Stanford) will gather data from sensors worn on the body, blood draws, and self-report diaries. Like the Kavli project, Project Baseline aims to enroll 10,000 people eventually.
Thomas Fiedler, dean of the Boston University College of Communication, argues that when newsrooms have few resources, it may be a waste of time to fact-check ‘fake news’.
Wolfram Alpha is making it easy for students to cheat and David Helfand (Columbia) is fine with it.
PROCJAM’s community is big, diverse, vibrant and growing really fast. Taking part in the jam is a great way to celebrate being in the community, but we also want to offer ways to build networks and share your work beyond the jam itself. That’s why we started Seeds last year – a zine written by the community, filled with articles, tutorials, art spreads, thoughts, postmortems, philosophy and more. Deadline for submissions is September 15.
