Brendan Frey
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Brendan John Frey FRSC (born 29 August 1968) is a Canadian-born entrepreneur, engineer and scientist. He is Founder and CEO of Deep Genomics, Cofounder of the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Professor of Engineering and Medicine at the University of Toronto. Frey is a pioneer in the development of
machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...
and
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
methods, their use in accurately determining the consequences of genetic
mutations In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA or viral replication, mi ...
, and in designing
medications A medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy (pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the medical field and rel ...
that can slow, stop or reverse the progression of disease. As far back as 1995, Frey co-invented one of the first
deep learning Deep learning (also known as deep structured learning) is part of a broader family of machine learning methods based on artificial neural networks with representation learning. Learning can be supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised. De ...
methods, called the
wake-sleep algorithm The wake-sleep algorithm is an unsupervised learning algorithm for a stochastic multilayer neural network. The algorithm adjusts the parameters so as to produce a good density estimator. There are two learning phases, the “wake” phase and the ...
, the affinity propagation algorithm for clustering and data summarization, and the
factor graph A factor graph is a bipartite graph representing the factorization of a function. In probability theory and its applications, factor graphs are used to represent factorization of a probability distribution function, enabling efficient computatio ...
notation for probability models. In the late 1990s, Frey was a leading researcher in the areas of
computer vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the hum ...
,
speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers with the m ...
, and
digital communications Data transmission and data reception or, more broadly, data communication or digital communications is the transfer and reception of data in the form of a digital bitstream or a digitized analog signal transmitted over a point-to-point or ...
. In 2002, a personal crisis led Frey to face the fact that there was a tragic gap between our ability to measure a patient's mutations and our ability to understand and treat the consequences. Recognizing that biology is too complex for humans to understand, that in the decades to come there would be an
exponential growth Exponential growth is a process that increases quantity over time. It occurs when the instantaneous rate of change (that is, the derivative) of a quantity with respect to time is proportional to the quantity itself. Described as a function, a q ...
in biology data, and that
machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...
is the best technology we have for discovering relationships in large datasets, Frey set out to build machine learning systems that could accurately predict genome and cell biology. His group pioneered much of the early work in the field and over the next 15 years published more papers in leading-edge journals than any other academic or industrial research lab. In 2015, Frey founded Deep Genomics, with the goal of building a company that can produce effective and safe genetic medicines more rapidly and with a higher rate of success than was previously possible. The company has received 60 million dollars in funding to date from leading Bay Area investors, including the backers of SpaceX and Tesla. In 2019, Deep Genomics became the first company to announce a
drug candidate In the fields of medicine, biotechnology and pharmacology, drug discovery is the process by which new candidate medications are discovered. Historically, drugs were discovered by identifying the active ingredient from traditional remedies or b ...
that was discovered by
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
.


Education

Frey studied computer engineering and physics at the
University of Calgary The University of Calgary (U of C or UCalgary) is a public research university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The University of Calgary started in 1944 as the Calgary branch of the University of Alberta, founded in 1908, prior to being ins ...
(BSc 1990) and the
University of Manitoba The University of Manitoba (U of M, UManitoba, or UM) is a Canadian public research university in the province of Manitoba.neural network A neural network is a network or circuit of biological neurons, or, in a modern sense, an artificial neural network, composed of artificial neurons or nodes. Thus, a neural network is either a biological neural network, made up of biological ...
s and
graphical model A graphical model or probabilistic graphical model (PGM) or structured probabilistic model is a probabilistic model for which a Graph (discrete mathematics), graph expresses the conditional dependence structure between random variables. They are ...
s as a doctoral candidate at the
University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...
under the supervision of
Geoffrey Hinton Geoffrey Everest Hinton One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 6 December 1947) is a British-Canadian cognitive psychologist and computer scientist, most noted for his work on a ...
(PhD 1997). He was an invited participant of the Machine Learning program at the
Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences The Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences is an international research institute for mathematics and its many applications at the University of Cambridge. It is named after one of the university's most illustrious figures, the mathemat ...
in Cambridge, UK (1997) and was a Beckman Fellow at the
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...
(1999).


Career

Following his undergraduate studies, Frey worked as a junior research scientist at Bell-Northern Research from 1990 to 1991. After completing his postdoctoral studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Frey was an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the
University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario Waterloo is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is one of three cities in the Regional Municipality ...
, from 1999 to 2001. In 2001, Frey joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto and was cross-appointed to the Department of Computer Science, the
Banting and Best Department of Medical Research The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 ...
and the Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research. From 2008 to 2009, he was a visiting researcher at
Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...
(Cambridge, UK) and a visiting professor in the
Cavendish Laboratories The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named ...
and Darwin College at
Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
. Between 2001 and 2014, Frey consulted for several groups at
Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...
and acted as a member of its Technical Advisory Board.


References


External links


Brendan J. Frey's profile at the Canadian Institute for Advanced ResearchGoogle Scholar report for Brendan Frey.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Frey, Brendan 1968 births Living people Academic staff of the University of Toronto Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada