Decoding the Human Microbiome with Guru Banavar from Viome

Using biological intelligence, human intelligence, and artificial intelligence, the company in the spotlight today aims to demystify health, make science accessible, and honor the biochemical individuality of every human.

Today on Impact AI, I am joined by the founding CTO and Head of Discovery AI at Viome, Guru Banavar! He is here to talk all about AI and the human microbiome. As you tune in, you’ll hear about Guru’s background and what led to the creation of Viome, including what they do and why their work is crucial to chronic disease. He unpacks their use of machine learning to turn RNA data into insights for their customers, the challenges they face in training models for the work they do, and Guru sheds light on the early steps of their process for planning and developing new machine-learning products or features.  Be sure not to miss out on this insightful conversation about how Guru and the team at Viome are working to decode the human microbiome.

Key Points:

• Learn about Guru’s background and what led to the creation of Viome.
• What Viome does and why it’s important for chronic disease.
• Using machine learning to turn RNA data into insights for customers at Viome.
• Guru highlights the challenges they face in training models based off of the work with RNA data and the large data set they’ve collected from customers. 
• He unpacks the early steps in the process of planning and developing a new machine-learning product or feature.
• We talk about technological advancements that made it possible to build their technology. 
• Guru’s advice to other leaders of AI-powered startups.
• His thoughts on the impact of Viome in the next 3-5 years.

Quotes:

“At some point in time, I decided that the impact that I wanted to make in the field of computational biology, life sciences, and healthcare could be done only if I joined a few of my friends from the broader community, and started a new company — [Viome].” — Guru Banavar

“I am one of those AI people who believes that you first focus on the problem, and you bring all of the tools you need to solve the problem. AI, to me, is not just one thing, like the latest buzzword. For me, AI is an ML, a set of tools, and you take the right tool for the right problem.” — Guru Banavar

“One of our core intellectual property elements is the meta-transcriptomic laboratory technology, which essentially, isolates, detects, and processes what we call the informative RNA molecules in any given sample. That required a number of sort of biochemistry-level technology breakthroughs.” — Guru Banavar

“I would advise other leaders of AI-powered startups to be very careful about how you pick your solution toolset, based upon the problem that you want to solve.” — Guru Banavar

Links:

Guruduth Banavar on LinkedIn

Guruduth Banavar on X

Viome

Viome Blog

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