Ronjon Nag

Bio

Ronjon Nag is an inventor, teacher and entrepreneur. He is an Adjunct Professor in Genetics at the Stanford School of Medicine, becoming a Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute Fellow in 2016. He teaches AI, Genes, Ethics, Longevity Science and Venture Capital. He is a founder and advisor/board member of multiple start-ups and President of the R42 Group, a venture capital firm which invests in, and creates, AI and Longevity companies. As an AI pioneer of smartphones and app stores, his companies have been sold to Apple, BlackBerry, and Motorola. More recently he has worked on the intersection of AI and Biology. He has been awarded the IET Mountbatten Medal by the Institution of Engineering and Technology, the 2021 IEEE-SCV Outstanding Engineer Award, the $1m Verizon Powerful Answers Award, the 2023 COX AI Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2023 MIT Great Dome Award, and is the 2024 Inductee in the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame. Professor Nag has a Ph.D from Cambridge, an M.S from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.Sc. from Birmingham in the UK. He has numerous interests in the intersection of AI and Healthcare including being CEO of Agemica.ai working on creating a vaccine for aging.

He has many firsts including:

Firsts:

• First laptop with speech recognition built-in (with Apricot, 1984)
• First selling cursive handwriting recognition (with Lexicus, 1991)
• First speech recognition phones (with Lexicus/Motorola, 1996)
• First large-vocabulary Chinese speech recognition (with Lexicus/Motorola, 1996)
• First Chinese predictive text system on a phone (Lexicus/Motorola, 1997)
• First predictive text systems in 40 languages on Motorola phones, (Lexicus/Motorola, 1997)
• First touch screen mobile phone with handwriting recognition (Lexicus/Motorola, 1999)
• First combined mobile search engine and directory (with Cellmania, 2000)
• First private label downloadable operator billable apps store (Cellmania, 2000)
• First BlackBerry Operator Billing apps store (Cellmania,2010)
• First Neural Network Artificial Intelligence System in the Cloud (Ersatz Labs, 2014)
• First Throwable 360 Ball Camera (Bounce Imaging, 2015)
• First Android powered smart light switch (Brightswitch 2017)
• First blood pressure watch with temperature and pulse oximetry add-ons for Back to Work Covid Kit (GTCardio 2019)
• First no code AI life sciences app store (Superbio.ai 2022)
• First proposal for an aging vaccine (Agemica 2023)

Academic Appointments

• Casual - Other Teaching Staff, Continuing Studies and Summer Session
• Member (Staff), Cardiovascular Institute

Honors & Awards

• Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame, Silicon Valley Engineering Council (2024)
• COGX AI LIfetime Achievement Award, COGX (2023)
• MIT Great Dome Award, MIT Alumni Angels of Northern California (2023)
• Entrepreneurial Spirit Award, IEEE (2021)
• IEEE-SCV Outstanding Engineer, IEEE (2021)
• $1m Powerful Answers Award, Verizon award to Bounce Imaging (2017)
• Mountbatten Medal, Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) (2014)

Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations

• Fellow, Institute of Engineering and Technology (1987 - Present)
• Senior Member, IEEE (1987 - Present)
• Board Member, MIT Club of Northern California (2022 - Present)
• Advisor, UC Berkeley Skydeck Accelerator (2015 - Present)
• Life Member, Association of Computing and Machinery (ACM) (2019 - Present)
• Board member, healx.ai (2023 - Present)