Changemakers: Rakesh Mathur

In 1969, a 13-year-old Rakesh Mathur sat awestruck as he watched the grainy footage of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon on his family’s television set.

“Witnessing that was transformational for me, a boy growing up in Bombay,” recalls Mathur. “It was something I latched onto and from there I became fascinated with science and technology and how it could change our lives.”

Fast forward almost 50 years and he is embarking on his own journey into uncharted territory. His giant leap for mankind involves finding a way for AI to detect cancer more accurately – and, crucially, earlier. No mean feat, but one that Mathur believes is entirely possible, having already dedicated much of his career – in Silicon Valley and beyond – to streamlining processes with the help of big data.

His optimistically named company Whiterabbit was launched in early 2017, with the aim of using AI to process an unlimited number of images of confirmed cancer cells and tumours which would then be used as a comparison during the screening of current patients.

“When you are using AI to solve a problem, the data becomes the most important thing. Training the system simply involves showing it a lot of examples,” he explains. “Fortunately, we’ve been given the exclusive rights to access cancer images and medical records from Washington University in St. Louis, one of the top fi ve medical schools in the US.” The deal was a coup and has enabled Whiterabbit to hit the ground running, establishing 10 clinics in California and Arizona and already helping thousands of patients.

The ambitious project has very personal origins for Mathur. While first looking into AI, he received news that his father had been diagnosed with stage-four cancer.

“I decided while we were looking after him at my home in California that I should do something to help others,” he says. “It all happened very quickly, but afterwards I decided I could make a difference to the early detection of cancer. So Whiterabbit was born,” he recalls.

To date, the company has focused on breast cancer data and screenings, hoping to perfect the model before moving into other areas.

“The current statistics for breast cancer aren’t great. In the US, 10% of women that are screened are called back, and of that group 42% of the cancers are caught,” says Mathur. “The level of accuracy Whiterabbit is operating at now is already higher than that.” Training data reveals they are finding cancer a year earlier than radiologists in 25% of cases.

That success rate hasn’t gone unnoticed by academics and business leaders and has helped the company raise US$30 million (£22 million) in capital funding to date to continue its vital work. Mathur remains typically modest about their success so far, but piquing the interest of investors and industry bigwigs is nothing new for him.

Having cut his tech teeth at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, he moved to the US to complete a masters in engineering at the University of Texas of Arlington. Silicon Valley was always the goal and by his mid-twenties he was employed at a tech firm there.

“Silicon Valley is all about making dreams into a process. It also struck me as one of those places where the most feared aren’t the billion-dollar companies. Those to look out for are the two kids in the garage with just an idea,” he says.

Stints working in India, where he got married, and then Boston followed, although the snowy weather and the pull of Silicon Valley meant he was back in sunny California by the mid-90s and at the helm of his fi rst proper company, Armedia, writing silicon chip designs. “We didn’t know how it would go,” he admits, “so I had an agreement with my wife that her career would be the meal ticket and I’d be the lottery ticket.”