Automation – A completely different thinking.

I have been spending some time on thinking about leadership. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down and listen to an Angel investor, who specializes in life science companies particularly in New York. I was excited because I have heard incredibly fluffy pieces about this individual. But, the moment this individual started to speak, I… Continue reading Automation – A completely different thinking.

Forced errors – Lessons from an accounting scandal.

In 2015 Toshiba corporation based in Minato, Tokyo, Japan, disclosed to its investors of a major corporate accounting malpractice. The accounting scandal dated back to the 2008 financial collapse. When the market forces became unfavorable, Toshiba resorted to the terrible art of creative accounting practices a.k.a cooking the books. Toshiba created a very interesting mechanism… Continue reading Forced errors – Lessons from an accounting scandal.

Fine tuning the cloud – Making machines learn faster.

In a previous post I discussed how easy it was to setup machine learning libraries in python using virtual machines (vm) hosted in the cloud. Today, I am going to add more details to it. This post covers how to make machine learning code run faster. This post will help any user compile a tensorflow… Continue reading Fine tuning the cloud – Making machines learn faster.

New kid in the block – Homomorphic encryption.

Healthcare data has an important challenge from a cryptography standpoint. It has to be both private and useful. An initial review of these requirements may appear as  two completely contradictory elements. Encrypted data using traditional encryption techniques remove the usability factor. In a traditional encryption scheme, unless the end user with the encrypted data has a… Continue reading New kid in the block – Homomorphic encryption.

Research and development – When is a good time to invest?

Businesses have limited resources. How to efficiently manage them is an art. A key controversial area of spending is always research and development (R&D). As a start-up we are even more constrained than a regular well established business. Therefore the question I often encounter: Is that a great idea to invest in research and development.… Continue reading Research and development – When is a good time to invest?

Virtualization – Matryoshka dolls of computing.

A few weeks back I talked about various open operating systems to efficiently run some of the deep learning and simulation models. I switched back and forth between six different flavors of linux to finally settle with one. This experimentation phase is helpful in the long-run. But, for folks who want to run one particular… Continue reading Virtualization – Matryoshka dolls of computing.

Democracy and science – What South Sudan teaches us?

I had an incredible opportunity to participate in a Doctors without borders (MSF) initiative to fill-in missing geographic information data into satellite images. This is an incredibly important process to figure out a huge number of operational details for aid agencies and non-profit organizations like MSF. This includes resource allocation, rapid disaster relief, quick response… Continue reading Democracy and science – What South Sudan teaches us?

Linux distros – The art of selecting one.

I have decided to migrate all of the programming environments to linux . The reason is simplicity of linux to run Python and R. I am often befuddled by common dependency issues, which linux seems to have avoided. This is especially true for Python. An added advantage is the ability to run very sophisticated deep learning… Continue reading Linux distros – The art of selecting one.

How to think like scientists – A five step process.

Richard Buckland, a professor of computer science, has a very elegant explanation on how to think like a scientist. Even though these steps are aimed at his computer science students, for me this has more general meaning and purpose. Richard’s simple five step process of getting into a scientific mindset are: The moment you encounter an interesting… Continue reading How to think like scientists – A five step process.

If I were a time traveler – Lessons learned.

If I were a time traveler, I would have traveled back exactly 121 years to witness one of the most important discoveries of modern medicine: x-ray. The photograph above on the left is the first ever recorded x-ray photograph of human anatomy and on the right is the photo of Wilhelm Röntgen, the man who… Continue reading If I were a time traveler – Lessons learned.