KOTAI Biotechnologies grew from two necessities: 1) to attract skilled software engineers and 2) to bridge the gap between academic research and drug discovery. The best programmers often don’t possess advanced degrees and so are unable to receive salaries in academia that are competitive with industry; however, strong programming skills are essential for cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) research and development. With regard to the first need, I initially wanted to treat my lab as a place to prototype new AI methods in the hope that KOTAI Biotechnologies would further develop the best prototypes into commercial products.  With regard to the second need, it is almost certain that the next generation of immunology-based diagnostics and drugs with require close collaboration between academia and industry, as demonstrated by the recent collaborations at IFReC with Chugai and Ostuka pharma. When we first launched KOTAI Biotechnologies, there were no companies working at the intersection of AI and immunology. Today, this is no longer the case: Microsoft and Adaptive Biotechnologies have developed an AI-based diagnostic platform and all immune cell sequencing companies have integrated software platforms to help researchers analyze their data.  Thus, the coming years will be crucial to the success of KOTAI Biotechnologies.

Speaker:
Daron M. Standley
Professor, Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University
Visiting Professor, Immunology Frontier Research Institute, Osaka University
Co-Founder, KOTAI Biotechnologies, Inc.

Speaker Profile:
Dr. Standley obtained his PhD in Chemistry from Columbia University in 1998. He worked at Schrodinger Inc., from 1998-2001 as a scientific programmer, where he developed the induced-fit docking algorithm that helped solidify Schrodinger’s position as computational chemistry software leader.  Dr. Standley then returned to academia and is currently a Professor at the Research Institute for Microbial Diseases and Visiting Professor at the Immunology Frontier Research Institute (IFReC). One of the major focuses of his lab is to develop computational tools to model B and T cell receptors. In 2017, Dr. Standley and his colleague, Dr. Kazuo Yamashita, launched KOTAI Biotechnologies, a Computational Immunology venture company focusing on the analysis B and T cell receptor sequence data.

Date and Time:
5 pm~6:30 pm
March 19th 2019

Venue:
1st Floor Salon Space, Research Institute for Microbial Diseases,
Osaka University Suita Campus
http://www.biken.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/access/

Host:
Osaka University Innovators’ Club
Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University
Osaka University Venture Capital, Co., Ltd