Valeria Kogan Biography

And last year, I got on the “30 to 30” list of Forbes magazine. We talked with her about the difficulties that scientists are faced with who decided to change the world. How do you walk in the park after this? Rather, it happens that I look at the flowers, I notice something either on the petals and think: “Damn! Why didn’t I think that we can work with flowers too? We have employees who literally analyze images - endlessly marking the marking - a stage in machine learning, when a person draws about the image or data of the conclusions to which the algorithm will subsequently have to come - approx.

They complain that they cannot pass by some bush at all without making him a diagnosis. I don't have this yet. How much did this shift in the focus planned or spontaneous? Plus, my dad is also engaged in business, and in my free time I often helped him. But I would say that scientific activity and doing business are somewhat similar. And there, and there you are all the time forced to do something that no one did before you.

Therefore, one organically goes into another. For some time I worked in a research laboratory, but even at the university we are talking about studying at the University of Ariel at Israel-approx. There you make science, but still for practical application. When you work in a startup-even in a small team and even if you do not have promotions or something like that-you still feel a strong involvement in the general process.

Therefore, my scientific activity has always been associated with business and the desire to create a commercially successful product. The idea of ​​the Fermata project also arose while studying, and early enough. I am actually not very close to agriculture, and the idea of ​​this particular project appeared by chance. At some point, I realized that modern technologies for diagnosis of patients are also applicable for plant diagnosis.

In addition, regulation in this area is much softer. But now you specialize in the software, and the hardware, firstly, shifted to the shoulders of partners, and secondly, the very idea with the robot was thrown away. For you, this was originally an attempt to emotionally cling to the project or are you still planning to reach the level when you can produce something that not only works, but also looks futuristic?

At that moment I did not understand at all what we were talking about at all. The reason we went to software is very simple: there are very few people who can do hard. This is an absolutely separate examination. Moreover, even if you make any wearable device, it is still very difficult, and people who are really able to make a quality product are units. And the market is not to say what is ready for this.

You come with a very innovative idea, you say: “People are working for you now, and we will replace them with technology. Only to make sure that it works, please pay us the X hundred thousand dollars forward.

” Of course, this is strange. And when we abandoned the idea of ​​a full -fledged robot and switched to just use cameras - and we do not develop the cameras themselves, but we take, as they say, off the Shelf “from the counter”, that is, the existing suppliers - approx. That is, the equipment is included in the cost of subscription to the service, and this is perceived much more organically.

And possible losses for the client are a maximum of several hundred dollars, if suddenly the decision does not like. In principle, I really like Fermata as an interesting business project, and not as a specific innovation in agriculture. That is, I want to build a beautiful scalable story that will find its narrow niche and will be the best in it, and ideally the only one. And the tasks are in such a way that it doesn’t matter to us how it looks, how beautiful or technological from the point of view of the external observer.

The main thing is that customers are as good as possible from our technology. How difficult is it for you to support both of these lines? Two of my projects are even difficult to combine in time, but intellectually it is a completely different activity. Fermata is a purely business project. There is a cool research part related to artificial intelligence, but in practice I do not particularly touch it, because I am engaged in business.

But even it is not so much scientific as engineering: what we need to understand how to properly form a product, how to properly train grids mean neural networks - approx. And then I already think about how to sell it best, how to pack it correctly, who can be our partners, how to capture the world and so on. And Smartomica is a different project, although two companies have really common investors and their teams communicate with each other.

In Smartomica, we are developing solutions that help doctors diagnose and treat complex, mainly oncological, patients. Despite the fact that this is also a business project, Chellengi here is completely different.In addition to me, this company has another co -founder, Dr. Igor Team - and my main function is to understand how to broadcast his ideas, his requests to a technical product.

At the same time, too business thinking is interfering here, because it kills creative-in the sense that you begin to think about how to do something as simple, small, easily packaged to assemble MVP an established abbreviation from Minimum Viable Product, a minimum viable product-approx. And next to me there are people who have large, creative, innovative and changing ideas for which you need to be more open than the usual business work requires.

It must be constantly remembered that this is a scientific project that aims to change how medicine works today, and not just earn money. What about Smartomica? Is it easier to interact with local medical organizations? Let's just say that it does not have a product ready for commercial promotion yet. But in the Russian market we already see obstacles associated primarily with how regulation is arranged.

Doctors are much more limited in freedom of action compared to Western ones. That is, conditionally, in Israel, if the patient has some kind of severe case, the doctor may decide at the level of his own hospital to act non-standard, if there is, of course, the scientific justification for these actions. As far as I know, in Russia it is much more complicated. And naturally, it is easier to start our work in countries where everything is as open as possible for such Science-Base based on science-approx.

That is, where in difficult cases you can slightly go beyond the limits of standard protocol medicine. The task of the company is to make the use of scientific knowledge by doctors. Therefore, everything around the regulation is spinning. But did the entrepreneurial environment have developed there, which would somehow help to develop your projects and allow you to direct work, even temporarily, to Latvia?

We chose it rather as a comfortable place for life than for doing business. There are cool opportunities for companies at an early stage - the same as in other countries of the European Union. But the market itself is small, and so far only an active startup environment is born here, especially in the biotechnical industry. Latvia has a very strong fintech, but this has little to do with us.

Namely, in the bioter or in the agrothekh, we are a little lonely. Therefore, I still wait for the pandemic to end and it will be possible to communicate more live. Last week I went to Israel, where there is no longer any coronavirus at the time of release of the interview, the number of registered cases in Israel did not exceed 50 per day for a month - approx.

He is engaged in the support of oncology research in Russia. My friend Kristina Zakurdaeva made it, and if possible I try to support this project. We have many very talented scientists, but they, unfortunately, are forced to go abroad in order to realize their ideas. The case that Christine does is very important and valuable - precisely from the point of view of the creation of local infrastructure and the environment for young scientists.

It does not seem correct to me that this has to be done through charitable foundations - the role of the state here should be more. But what is, that is. Does it help in your work or interferes? It seems to me that this is something more. I think that in any life there is a place for a fairy tale. And even when you are a pragmatist, a scientist and so on, it is still very important to leave a space for fantasies about something more inside.

In principle, I love fiction and good kind fairy tales about love, because it seems to me that all this is extremely important to bring to life. Be it science fiction or fairy tale. And recently I have been reading non-fiction about the history of Russia-now these are memories of Nadezhda Mandelstam.