nference and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Enter Into Multi-Year Collaboration to Advance Health Equity

nference partners with medical centers to turn decades of rich and predominantly unstructured data captured in EMRs into powerful solutions that enable scientists to discover and develop the next-generation of personalized diagnostics and treatments for patients worldwide.

nference | About Us

Murali Aravamudan is a serial entrepreneur, inventor and engineer who built successful technology companies in the Media and Telecom ecosystems. Murali is currently focused on his Life Sciences startup nference and affiliate ventures Anumana, Pramana and Vimana.   Powered by its Artificial Intelligence software platform, the nference mission is to transform Healthcare by making biomedical knowledge computable. nference has established novel strategic and exclusive partnerships with multiple Academic Medical Centers including the Mayo Clinic, Duke Health and others to synthesize the holistic institutional knowledge (from 40 million patient lives with longitudinal data) across all structured (complete Electronic Health Record) and unstructured data modalities (ECG/Echo/CT/MRI, Pathology and deep molecular sequencing) using Deep Learning Neural Networks. The nference platform and its massive biomedical corpus is used by several Top Pharma/Biotech, Medical Devices and Diagnostics companies (in addition to the nference affiliates) to accelerate the conception, design, development, life cycle management of Diagnostics and Therapeutics. The company has raised around $150M in venture capital from Matrix Capital Management, NTTVC, Matrix Partners along with strategic investment from Mayo Clinic and Duke Health.

Anumana unlocks the potential of electrophysiological data to transform cardiac care with cutting-edge AI solutions (ECG-AI) for early and efficient diagnosis and treatment. ECG-AI enables a future where ECGs (electrocardiograms) are routinely run through a panel of sophisticated AI algorithms and can perform risk detection across major disease areas.  Four of these algorithms have obtained the FDA Breakthrough Device Designation. In the interventional setting, synthesizing insights using in-procedure Electrogram (EGM data), Anumana AI algorithms democratize Electrophysiology procedures such as Catheter Ablation for Atrial Fibrillation/Ventricular Tachycardia. The company has raised around $86M in venture capital from Matrix Capital Management, Mayo Clinic, and NTTVC.

Pramana is focused on accelerating the digital transformation of Anatomic Pathology. Pramana is revolutionizing digital pathology through the use of a software-first approach to whole slide imaging, leveraging our own robotic slide scanning platform, AI, edge computing and autonomous, dynamic, pixel level z-stacking for unparalleled image quality and data. Pramana’s robotic systems are on pace to create the planet’s largest digital pathology archives by 2024. The company has raised around $30M in venture capital from Matrix Capital Management and NTTVC.

Murali serves on the Board of Directors as well as the Chief Executive Officer of nference, Pramana, and Vimana. He is also the Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors at Anumana.

Previously Murali co-founded Veveo with the goal of enabling quick and efficient content discovery in input constrained devices such as televisions and mobile phones. As CEO of Veveo, he established the company’s leadership in its target market segments with more than 100 million device deployments, and its innovation of conversational interfaces. The thought leadership has translated into an expanding patent portfolio for Veveo with 95 granted US patents and 70+ pending patent applications. Murali helped to raise $28M in equity over two rounds from Matrix Partners, Norwest Ventures and Northbridge Ventures. Veveo was subsequently acquired by Tivo (formerly, Rovi) in 2014 for over $75M.

Prior to founding Veveo in 2005, Murali was vice president and general manager of the Winphoria Division of Motorola’s Global Telecom Solutions Sector, following the successful acquisition of Winphoria Networks, a company he founded in 2000 and led as CTO until its acquisition in 2003.  Winphoria Networks was a pioneer in the groundbreaking Mobile Wireless SoftSwitch and Instant Communications applications for mobile networks. As part of Winphoria, Murali helped to raise $54M in equity over two rounds from Matrix Partners, Norwest Ventures and Northbridge Ventures. Winphoria was subsequently acquired by Motorola for around $200M.

Earlier in his career, Murali served as Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of the Communications Software Business at Lucent Technologies and as a department head of Communications Software Research at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill. Murali was one of the principals involved in the creation of the SoftSwitch, revolutionary technology for IP-based telephone networks that now serves as the foundation for next-generation converged voice and data networks. 

Murali has authored 130 US patents and has more than 100+ pending patents and academic publications in the areas of search, personalization, conversational interfaces, machine learning/AI systems, data networking, telephony and, most recently, computational biology and biomedicine. 

Murali holds a Masters degree in Electrical Communication Engineering from Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru (1989).

Venky Soundararajan, PhD is an entrepreneur, scientist and inventor. As the chief evangelist for nference, Dr. Soundararajan has been instrumental in building the long-term strategic partnership with the Mayo Clinic, by enabling the automated de-identification of EHRs to protect patient privacy and their machine-augmented curation to unlock real-time biomedical insights. By harnessing this distinctive platform, Dr. Soundararajan has led multi- year R&D data-science collaborations with some of the world’s largest enterprises. These collaborations have spanned a broad spectrum of clinico-genomic applications, ranging from the discovery of novel medicine and diagnostic solutions, to the quantification of real-world epidemiological outcomes such as the impact of mass vaccination on pandemics. Dr. Soundararajan’s scientific research on the COVID-19 pandemic has led to multiple breakthroughs that have shaped public health policy. Some of these salient contributions include decoding the earliest signals of COVID-19 onset, identifying the reservoirs of SARS- CoV-2 infectivity at single cell resolution, genomic epidemiology for pinpointing the emergence of variants of concern, and publishing the world’s first real-world studies validating the effectiveness, safety, and durability of the COVID-19 vaccines. Beyond pandemic preparedness, Dr. Soundararajan’s research has resulted in the identification of multiple tumor-specific antigens and decoding the earliest signals for detecting chronic diseases like pulmonary hypertension from raw ECG waveforms. His ultimate mission is to teach machines how to read and comprehend all forms of biological data and clinical knowledge, towards the vision of transforming healthcare to benefit every patient and care provider in our world. Dr. Soundararajan has authored over 50 scientific papers and patents. His scientific findings have been covered widely by mainstream media and cited by multiple public health agencies, regulatory bodies, and governments. Dr. Soundararajan completed his Fellowship in Genetics at Harvard Medical School, and received his PhD from MIT in Biological Engineering and his Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).

nference was founded by Murali Aravamudan, CEO, and Venky Soundararajan, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer.

Ajit Rajasekharan is an accomplished machine-learning practitioner with broad experience in technological innovation. He is a regular contributor to the Medium publication Toward Data Science and the data science community at Quora on the topics of natural language processing and machine learning. Prior to joining nference, he was vice president of engineering at Rovi, the company that acquired Veveo, which was subsequently acquired by TiVo.  Mr. Rajasekharan, a co-founder of Veveo, also co-founded Readia, an innovator in digital education. Prior to Readia he was an engineer at Audible, where he participated in building the world’s first digital audio player and secure digital content delivery system.  Mr. Rajasekharan holds more than 60 U.S. patents. He earned two bachelor’s degrees, one in Physics from Madras Christian College and the other in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Science.

Maulik Nanavaty, is an executive with more than three decades of experience in operational and commercial medical device experience in the U.S. and international markets. In addition to his role as President, Ventures at nference, he also serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Anumana and Chief Executive Officer of Vimana.  

Mr. Nanavaty joins Anumana after 18 years at Boston Scientific, where most recently, he was Senior Vice President and President of Neuromodulation at Boston Scientific, a $1B  global business unit, leading the development and commercialization of microelectronic implantable technologies and software used to treat neurological diseases and other chronic conditions. Prior to this role, Mr. Nanavaty was the President of Boston Scientific Japan, and previously Vice President and General Manager of Interventional Cardiology, Boston Scientific Japan. Prior to Boston Scientific, Mr. Nanavaty spent 16 years in various executive positions at Baxter.  Maulik is a member of the board of directors for Rani Therapeutics, a publicly listed biotechnology company.

 Maulik earned a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Illinois and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago.

David McMullin has more than two decades of experience in corporate development, strategic planning, commercialization and operations across multiple sectors in the life sciences industry. 
In addition to serving as chief business officer of Anumana, he continues in his role of chief strategy officer of nference. 
Prior to joining nference and Anumana, Mr. McMullin served as chief business officer of Aldeyra Therapeutics, a Nasdaq listed biotechnology company. Before Aldeyra, Mr. McMullin ran U.S. Internal Medicine at Shire plc, a $1.4 billion rare disease and specialty pharmaceutical company, and was previously the head of Global Commercial Operations at Shire. 
Prior to his work at Shire, he was the vice president of Global Supply Chain Management and Strategy at Novartis. He holds an MBA with high distinction as a Baker Scholar from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Brigham Young University.

Prior to joining nference labs (Bangalore, India) as the VP of Engineering, Vishy was the Head of Engineering at Blackbuck where he worked on India’s fastest growing online freight MarketPlace. He’s also serves as a Member of the Board of Trustees at the eVidyaloka Trust, a not for profit organization in Bangalore that aims at transforming the educational landscape of rural India. Vishy also worked at Veveo.net, which was later acquired by Rovi(TiVO) and Winphoria Networks (acquired by Motorola).

Kyle oversees nference's global legal affairs, bringing to the company more than 25 years of experience in managing corporate legal operations and compliance functions as well as implementing complex life sciences and other strategic collaborations. Prior to nference, Kyle was Senior Vice President and General Counsel of iboss, a global cybersecurity firm, and previously served as Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Decision Resources Group (DRG), a global provider of best-in-class healthcare data, analytics and insights products and services. Prior to DRG, Kyle was Senior Vice President and General Counsel for The Princeton Review, Inc., a college admissions and test preparation company. 

Earlier in his career, he served as Vice President and Associate General Counsel at Sapient Corporation, a global integrated marketing and technology services company, and Director of Legal Affairs and M&A Integration for ZEFER, a technology implementation and consulting services firm. He began his career as an associate in the health law department of Ropes & Gray, a global law firm. Kyle holds a B.A. with Distinction from the University of Michigan and a Juris Doctor degree, magna cum laude, from Boston College Law School.

Tom has over 30 years of experience serving in a wide variety of financial roles. He has been the Chief Financial Officer of four organizations and spent the last 14 years in life sciences, serving as CFO of Harvard Bioscience, Inc. and Biostage, Inc. Previously, he was CFO of Tivoli Audio, a venture capital-backed start-up, and of Cabot Supermetals, a $350 million Cabot Corporation division. he spent eight years practicing as a Certified Public Accountant at Deloitte & Touche after earning a BS in Finance and Accounting at Babson College.

Mr. Palmin has a successful track record of building, financing and operating public/private life sciences companies for 25+ years, having taken 3 companies public. He has been serving as CFO at Anumana, Inc. and CFO Ventures at nference, Inc from April 2024. Mr. Palmin previously served as CFO at Acer Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq: ACER) from 2016 until the sale to Zevra Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: ZVRA) in November 2023. He took Acer public in 2017 achieving a $330 million peak market capitalization and raised $172 million in pursuit of Acer’s drug development and commercial objectives culminating in OLPRUVA® approval in December 2022. Mr. Palmin also served as Acer’s COO from 2018 until June 2022, and as President, CEO and board director at Acer from 2013 until 2016, having originally built Acer into a venture-backed ultra orphan pharmaceutical company with late-stage clinical products. From 1998 until 2013, he served as President, CEO, Acting CFO and board director at Novelos Therapeutics, Inc. (CEO 2005-2013; Acting CFO 1998-2005). Mr. Palmin built Novelos from a concept into a $500 million peak market capitalization public oncology and infectious disease development company that completed a pivotal Phase 3 lung cancer trial. He then rebuilt Novelos as a public company around a cancer-targeted delivery platform with 3 lead compounds. Mr. Palmin raised $98 million in pursuit of Novelos’ drug development and commercial objectives; and recruited, led and managed executive teams. Overall, he raised $270 million for Acer and Novelos, oversaw 14 clinical studies in oncology, ultra orphan and infectious diseases, including two pivotal Phase 3 trials under SPAs. Mr. Palmin supported multiple pre-commercial activities and the launch of OLPRUVA®.

From 1996 to 1998, Mr. Palmin was a Vice President at Lehman Brothers and from 1993 to 1996, he was an Associate at Morgan Stanley & Co.

Mr. Palmin earned a B.A. in economics and business, magna cum laude, and a M.A. in international economics and finance from the International Business School at Brandeis University. He has also studied at the London School of Economics and the Copenhagen Business School.

Prasanth Perugupalli is the Chief Product Officer for Pramana. He previously founded Spectral Insights, which was acquired by nference Inc in May 2020, and spun off as Pramana. His strengths are in product definition and execution, and has built a multi-disciplinary team that had dreamt and delivered a highly differentiated technology in a relatively short span of time. He is the key inventor of novel ways of image capture and image management for whole slide imaging which have been widely acknowledged to address a host of historic challenges with digital imaging in pathology.

Prasanth has previously held senior management and product line roles in semiconductor industry. He was the Managing Director for IMEC India, where his team explored the use of Hyperspectral Imaging for medical and consumer applications. As a product line director for WiFi products at Broadcom Corp (Irvine, CA), Prasanth led the development of early chipsets for multi-gigabit WiFi and was the board member of WiGig alliance. He obtained a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Illinois at Chicago.

Prasanth is responsible for R&D, regulatory, and manufacturing activities within Pramana. Prasanth is very actively involved in customer engagements, and truly cherishes opportunities to work with domain specialists to understand their work and conceive solutions that bring delight to his customers.

Chief Business Development Officer, Pramana

Mike Koenig is Pramana's Chief Business Development Officer.  Most recently, he served as a partner and portfolio manager at NTTVC, a $500 million independent venture firm formed in partnership with NTT. Previously, Mr. Koenig was the Global Head of Business Development and Customer Success at TiVo prior to its acquisition by Rovi. Before TiVo, he served as CCO at Veveo, where he managed sales, business development and services, and led its acquisition by Rovi.  Earlier in his career, Mr. Koenig served as vice president of Product Management, Sales and Professional Services at Motorola and Winphoria Networks, and in other leadership positions at Lucent Technologies and AT&T. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Marketing from Arizona State University. 

Dr. Rakesh Barve is vice president of data science and engineering at Anumana and serves in the same role at nference, where he has been for almost three years. At nference, Dr. Barve is building the first large-scale, AI-based inference and decision-enabling pharmacological and clinical data platform to enable intelligent and effective clinical care solutions and drug development. He is leading engineering and product teams using AI, statistics and computer science techniques to synthesize scientifically sound knowledge from vast heterogenous volumes of biomedical and clinical healthcare data. Prior to joining nference, Dr. Barve his undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, followed by a PhD in Computer Science from Duke University.

Sankar Ardhanari enjoys building software to help solve life science problems at nference. Prior to joining nference he was leading efforts in automated information extraction and image processing in TiVo. At Veveo, which was acquired by Rovi(TiVo), he built personalized search and conversation interfaces across mobile, set-top-box and web platforms. Previously at Winphoria, acquired by Motorola, and Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies he engineered fault-tolerant networking and telecommunication systems.

Trisha Ellis is a highly accomplished human resources professional with proven record of leading strategic HR functions for Global Technology organizations. In previous roles, Trisha has helped to execute successful talent management and HR Services delivery as well as act as a strong partner, advisor and key influencer to senior executive leaders (SVPs, Division Presidents, CIO). Prior to joining nference, Trisha worked at Virtustream as Chief Human Resources Officer and Dell as Vice President of Human Resources and Global Services.

nference’s senior leadership team boasts of experts spanning the technology, life sciences and data sectors.

To date nference has raised more than $150M capital from Matrix Capital Management, Matrix Partners, Mayo Clinic Ventures and NTTVC.

One Main Street, Suite 400 East Arcade, 4th Floor Cambridge, MA 02142

3rd, 4th & 5th Floor, Indiqube Golf View Homes, 3rd Cross, Rustam Bagh Layout, NAL Wind Tunnel Main Road, Murugeshpalya, Bengaluru - 560017

181 University Avenue, Suite 210, Toronto, ON M5H 3M7

18 3rd Street S.W. Suite #201 Rochester, MN 55902

Powering quantum leaps in human health

Founders

Murali Aravamudan

Venky Soundararajan, PhD

Leadership Team

Ajit Rajasekharan

Maulik Nanavaty, Ph.D.

David McMullin

Vishy Thiagarajan

Kyle Bettigole

Tom McNaughton

Harry S. Palmin

Prasanth Perugapalli

Mike Koenig

Rakesh Barve

Sankar Ardhanari

Trisha Ellis

Board and investors

Murali Aravamudan

David Goel

John Halamka

Offices

Cambridge, MA (Headquarters)

Bangalore

Toronto

Rochester

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