Dr. Ronjon Nag is a renowned inventor, entrepreneur, and educator, with over 40 years of experience in developing AI technologies for smartphones, neural networks, and biotechnology. He is the Founder and President of R42 Group, a family office and venture group that invests primarily in AI, biotechnology, and science, and supports pre-seed stage companies in their growth journey.
He is also an Adjunct Professor in Genetics in the Stanford School of Medicine and a Visiting Fellow at the Stanford Center for Language and Information (CSLI), where he teaches popular courses on AI, Genes, Ethics, Longevity Science, and Venture Capital. He is a Fellow and Trustee of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and a Lifetime Member of the ACM. He has won multiple prestigious awards, including the IET Mountbatten Medal, the $1m Verizon Powerful Answers Award, the COGX AI Lifetime Achievement Award, the MIT Great Dome Award and is the 2024 Silicon Valley Engineering Council Hall of Fame Inductee. He is a founder, advisor, board member, and part owner of some 100 AI and Biotech start-ups, and has sold his companies to Apple, BlackBerry, and Motorola. He is passionate about inventing, informing, and investing in the future of humanity. He has a BSc (Birmingham), an MS (MIT), and a PhD (Cambridge).
He has accomplished many firsts:
• First laptop with speech recognition built-in (UK: Apricot Computers, 1984)
• First selling cursive handwriting recognition system (with Lexicus, 1992)
• First Chinese speech recognition dictation system (Lexicus/Motorola, 1996)
• First speech recognition phones (Lexicus/Motorola, 1995)
• First Chinese predictive text system on a phone (Lexicus/Motorola, 1997)
• First predictive text systems in large volume (40 languages) on phones
(Lexicus/Motorola, 1997)
• First touch screen phone with apps, HTML browser, speech & handwriting
recognition
(Lexicus/Motorola, 1999)
• First combined mobile app store and search engine (with Cellmania,
2000-2010)
• First operator billable BlackBerry App Store (2011)
• First Neural Network Artificial Intelligence System in the Cloud (Ersatz Labs,
2014)
• First Wireless Throwable Camera (Bounce Imaging, 2015)
• First Android powered smarthome lightswitch (Brightswitch, 2017)
• First continuous blood pressure wearable (GT Cardio 2019)
• First holographic phone call (R42 – Vivid-Q 2021)
• First AutoML AI platform for biologists requiring no code (Superbio.ai 2021)
• Proposed the first vaccine for aging developed using AI (Agemica.ai 2023)
