FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

September 15, 2022
Kasia Proctor, Marketing & Communications
ViQi, Inc.
kasia@pozytech.com

ViQi, Inc. announces Pascal Bamford, Ph.D. and Timothy Spicer, Ph.D. have joined the board of directors and scientific advisory board, respectively.

Santa Barbara, CA – September 15, 2022 - ViQi, Inc, a California cloud-based image analysis company specializing in using artificial intelligence for the scientific discovery process, is excited to announce the appointment of Pascal Bamford, Ph.D. to the board of directors and Timothy Spicer, Ph.D. as the inaugural member of the scientific advisory board. 

Pascal Bamford, Ph.D., is senior vice president of research and development and laboratory operations at Akoya Biosciences and brings his expertise in image analysis, software development and clinical systems implementation.  Dr. Bamford has a PhD in cell image analysis from the University of Queensland, Australia and has spent his career applying advanced technologies to cancer diagnostics at companies such as Roche, Genomic Health and Exact Sciences. Pascal’s insights into the wealth of opportunities for the ViQi platform and applications are invaluable to the company’s future direction. 

Timothy Spicer, Ph.D. is a Research Professor and senior scientific director at UF Scripps Biomedical Research and of the current President of the board of directors at Society of Laboratory Automation & Screening (SLAS).  Dr. Spicer brings with him extensive knowledge of High Throughput Screening systems and technology development, over 30 years of drug discovery experience, 100+ publications and multiple patents. Tim’s understanding of the automation and how High Content Analysis fits into the HTS process and its current needs and limitations, will help to navigate what AI solutions ViQi will focus on.

“We are thrilled to get the advice and guidance from both Tim and Pascal.  Their depth of understanding of these markets, the unresolved problems, the future vision and business strategy will be crucial in maximizing ViQi’s impact globally.” said Kathy Yeung, ViQi CEO.

Dr. Bamford commented, “The application of machine learning for new scientific discoveries and robust application deployment is without question. A key challenge has been the ability to seamlessly and efficiently manage the discovery to implementation cycle in a scalable, integrated and traceable fashion. The ViQi team have built an artificial intelligence platform and toolset that greatly accelerates this cycle and has enormous potential to drive innovation across many fields and industries. I am honored and excited to contribute to ViQi’s impactful mission.”

Dr. Spicer also added, “I have personally experienced the power of High Throughput Screening and automation which has afforded us many critical discoveries, providing leads that ultimately have become live changing drugs.  It’s also always nice to play in the intersection of science and technology especially when something as effectual as AI comes around. It’s true that traditional HTS generates lots of valuable data which we deal with in many beneficial ways, but we are still limited by what we perceive is the utility of the data. Today, we see so many more imaging applications in the HTS environment that output such eloquent data that, frankly, we need better analysis tools to help us interpret that data.”

About ViQi, Inc: ViQi provides large-scale image analysis and visualization expertise and cloud-based software for the life, earth, and material sciences industries. ViQi users can visualize, analyze, and store over 250 types of image and data formats in one central repository.  Unique user research workflows can easily be automated and scaled through machine learning and AI. Learn more at viqiai.com.