Sunday 2 January 2022

Women in Machine Learning!! Ramya Yellapragada, Co-founder, StimVeda Neurosciences, AI for Personalized Mental Health and Well Being!! Get Inspired!!

Dear Friends and Students

Recently I came across StimVeda Neurosciences. It is a startup started in June 2020, envisioning to develop India’s first non-invasive brain stimulation device for the treatment of depression.

This device records brain data using EEG sensors and runs it through its machine learning model. Based on the classification of the model, users receive the most suitable stimulation parameters.

As soon as I heard about this startup, I started searching for the founders. Ms. Ramya Yellapragada and Mr. Lakshay Sahni started this innovative venture.

When I read about Ms. Ramya’s surname “Yellapragada”, immediately I was remembering Yellapragada Subba Rao, (12 January 1895 – 8 August 1948), a pioneering Indian biochemist who discovered the function of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) as an energy source in the cell, developed methotrexate for the treatment of cancer! One of the Journal articles cites, “You've probably never heard of Dr. Yellapragada Subbarao. Yet because he lived, you may be alive and are well today. Because he lived, you may live longer.”

Incredible India!!

Ramya hails from Vizag and studied in Vizag till +2 (2013-2015). She secured JEE Mains All India Rank 190 (2015) and joined Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi, Bachelor of Technology Computer Science (2015-19). She started StimVeda Neurosciences in June 2020. STIMVEDA is chosen as one of the 7 Healthcare startups (only 1 from India) to watch out for in 2021 around the world.

Their first product, EASE, to help you deal with depression in a side-effect free and personalized way. The novel technology uses non-invasive brain stimulation personalized to you to help restore emotional control and cognitive processing.

How does ML help in this?

Regular Self-Assessment Depression Questionnaire; Record the Brain State before stimulation using EEG; ML model quantifies your Depression into a Hybrid Rating Scale; ML Model processes the depression rating and gives the stimulation parameters suitable to you; Stimulation: During Stimulation you will be engaged in Behavioral Therapy and simple Cognitive Games.

Lakshay Sahni, another co-founder, StimVeda Neurosciences, did his Btech from Delhi College of Engineering (2014-18), worked for 1 year as Associate Consultant - Robotics & Intelligent Automation, in EY.

Ramya was also heading, Women in Machine Learning and Data Science, Delhi Chapter of https://wimlworkshop.org/?page_id=4 . You may join https://groups.google.com/g/women-in-machine-learning

India has been the birthplace of Yoga, Meditation and Mindfulness. In between, we have lost our way. Mental health has become taboo. Our country now has the most number of Depression cases, and the 2nd most number of Dementia cases. At StimVeda, they are bringing back the focus of India on Mental Well-being. "Samastha Lokah Sukhinoh Bhavantu" - May the entire world be happy.

Best Wishes Ramya and Lakshay

Get Inspired!

Your Well-wisher

Ravi Saripalle

Join Inspire to Innovate Storytelling Movement (i2itm.blogspot.com)

No comments:

Post a Comment