Qubigen is an exciting new venture that combines Federated AI technology, quantum chemistry and drug design capabilities. Qubigen’s mission is to create the largest global federated proprietary dataset and computational toolbox for AI driven drug design.
Qubigen’s Federated AI draws insights from medical and pharmaceutical data without moving or seeing the data, allowing diversity through collaboration, to ensure unbiased and generalisable AI. Qubigen is focused on making drug discovery faster, cheaper, more efficient and more collaborative. By training Generative AI and using molecular mechanics and quantum chemistry, modelled on real-world experimental results, Qubigen may be able to discover new medicines that no one single institute could discover on their own.Operating since Nov 2024, Qubigen is a brand-new organisation, however their previous business, Presagen, which formed part of a merger to create this new company, has been connected to GigCity since 2019.
“The reason for connecting to GigCity is that we are a technology company in a data-hungry industry. Typically, data needed to train real-world AI that works and scales well is large, or requires continual access to cloud services. As a result, our company needs to make use of the best internet connectivity to deliver AI solutions to our collaborators and clients”, explains Dr Jonathan Hall, Qubigen Founder & MD.
Through connection to GigCity, Qubigen appreciates the fast upload/download speeds when needing to access large amounts of testing data. Jonathan says, “In addition, we require continual and uninterrupted internet connectivity, so using GigCity just made sense.”
“Right now we are in the early days of this company, but we can say that, so far, we needed to make use of fast connectivity for some quite large uploads/downloads, which wouldn’t have been possible without GigCity, and likely would have delayed our R&D work significantly.
“With this new company, it’s very important to have good connectivity, because we will need to serve clients by running our proprietary AI processes on a wide range of distributed data”.
Reflecting on the last few years,the GigCity connection was vital in this industry during the pandemic when many companies worldwide went through difficult staffing shortages. For some US-based hospitals, it was more difficult to collaborate on R&D projects, because of these shortages. Jonathan says, “We, however, in our previous company, were able to complete a stunning, novel project in the field of computer vision, and create a new product that obtained regulatory approval in the EU region in 4 months after inception. This was a step forward for Life Whisperer at the time. We were able to do this because we could handle datasets that our collaborators didn’t have the manpower or capacity to be able to prepare for us remotely. As a result, we needed to rely on large dataset management more than we anticipated. Therefore, the speed and connectivity was extremely important to be able to complete a successful project and product commercialisation”.
Right now, Adelaide is starting to be seen more widely as a science and technology powerhouse in Australia. Jonathan says, “Within Lot Fourteen, with the Australian Space Agency, the Australian Institute for Machine Learning and many other national centres close by, combined with a history of Nobel Prize winning university research, Adelaide is considered a high-tech city and an originator of great innovation.
“As a result, it is no surprise our company is beginning in Adelaide, where software, AI and biotech startups could lead the charge for all of Australia. Historically, clients came to think of Adelaide as the place to be for new technology from Australia. In our new company, we aim to continue bringing high quality AI products and services to clients and further augment this reputation”.
Qubigen has several staff members and directors of their company residing interstate in Victoria and one of their key staff overseas in USA. Therefore, Jonathan says, “We rely on good connectivity in order to support daily operations.
Expanding on the lure of Adelaide, Jonathan says, “People have wanted to stay in Adelaide because it not only affords a great lifestyle and living conditions are pleasant, but there is a buzz of new technology and exciting startups happening, and graduates from any of South Australia’s universities often wish to stay and be involved in tech companies and industry which is beginning to burgeon here, if we continue to cultivate it. The Australian technology ecosystem, globally, is still far behind many countries in terms of investment, so it’ll only happen if people know how vulnerable it is, and we continue to support it.
In the future Jonathan hopes to see Qubigen grow to become an important, collaborative enabler for drug discovery worldwide. “We see we could be placed to bring together partners from around the world, large institutes across the US as well as Australia to bring together technology, knowledge, multi-disciplinary expertise and science to help crack the problem of creating novel medicines for some of our worst diseases”.
Appreciating the support of the GigCity connection, Jonathan says, “GigCity has helped us become a world leader in AI drug design. Our company has forged new partnerships and previously we expanded into 48 different countries with a global product, commercialised here in Adelaide. In this new venture, we are going straight back to work to bring new and exciting technology to the world, and we can do it all from Adelaide”.
Hear Dr Jonathan Hall speaking about Qubigen and how GigCity supports his work.
https://youtu.be/sYzgEYBw5YM
Learn more about the impactful work of Qubigen by visiting their website:
https://www.qubigen.com/
GigCity is a Government of South Australia initiative delivering affordable, high-speed internet to innovation precincts across the state.
Participating businesses experience gigabit speed broadband, enabling greater collaboration between colleagues and easy sharing with clients around the world.
Learn how connecting to GigCity could benefit your business: www.gigcity.com.au
