Lytica adds Dr. Shahzad Khan as CRO to advance Artificial Intelligence for cost and risk assessment of electronic components.
Ottawa, Canada. (April 3rd, 2018) – Lytica Inc. announced the appointment of Dr. Shahzad Khan as their new Chief Research Officer (CRO), effective April 2nd, 2018. Three of Dr. Khan’s colleagues have also joined Lytica as research staff.
As Lytica’s CRO, Dr. Khan will be responsible for setting research direction and defining the core technologies required for Lytica’s product roadmap. In this capacity, Dr. Khan will report to Ken Bradley, Lytica’s founder and CTO.
Dr. Khan is a serial entrepreneur, with a PhD in Computer Science from Cambridge University (UK), and has 22 years of experience in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and computational linguistics. He has authored more than 20 research papers and holds 6 patents related to relevant inventions. His latest venture – Gnowit – has been focused on AI consulting and real-time media, industry and government intelligence applications.
Dr. Khan and his team are deeply familiar with Lytica’s Advanced Technology Centre (ATC) and proprietary technologies. The knowledge and expertise the Gnowit team brings is a valuable addition to Lytica. Gnowit partnered with Lytica last year to drive a 20x+ increase in priced components within Lytica’s Freebenchmarking.com (FBDC) using AI techniques. As a result, Lytica is acquiring Gnowit’s professional services division and licensing its technologies to effectively leverage AI in its products and processes.
Ken Bradley, Lytica’s Founder and CTO, explained the recent collaboration: “An industry-wide problem experienced by every participant within the ecosystem revolves around inadvertently corrupt data. Companies compensate for this issue by diverting their ‘subject experts’ and tasking them with cleaning up part number and product attributes prior to the data moving further upstream or downstream. Last year, we demonstrated through our work that advanced AI algorithms can reliably repair corrupt data.” Mr. Bradley added: “This core work has already improved our current products and enables a number of planned product releases for supply chain enhancement.”
Mark Tayles, Lytica’s President and CEO, adds “we are excited to have Dr. Khan and his colleagues join our Lytica team. Along with his Gnowit colleagues, Dr. Khan’s work with Lytica’s ATC has seen an exponential increase in the number of valid and priced components within the Freebenchmarking.com (FBDC) database. This increase was possible through the application of AI techniques.”
“Electronic OEMs and EMS providers are under tremendous time and financial pressure to produce increasingly cost-effective products, with minimal risk, using as little operational overhead as possible,” Mr. Tayles said. “Consistent with Lytica’s mission — making good companies more competitive by providing the most trusted e-component market intelligence around pricing, security of supply and compliance — we’re delighted to have Dr. Khan and his colleagues join the Lytica team to further our value to the electronics ecosystem.”
Dr. Khan commented on his role as Lytica’s CRO: “I’m excited as this represents an investment in excess of $2M over the next few years. Working as part of the Lytica team allows us to laser-focus our AI and language processing technologies expertise squarely at the root of some complex industry problems.”
Dr. Khan further elaborated on how to navigate the continuously evolving industry. “The morphing of the electronic industry from a vertical to a horizontal orientation has exposed a number of legacy friction points that impede the rapid and reliable transmission of component information. AI and deep learning are ideally suited for identifying and replacing these friction points. We are also looking forward to employing AI techniques to deliver new products that proactively identify likely supply chain disruptions for Lytica’s customers.”
For more information on Lytica’s electronic component cost benchmarking products, contact Lytica at 1-613-271-1414 x223 or visit www.lytica.com.
About Lytica Inc. (www.lytica.com)
Lytica enables unprecedented levels of cost reduction for many of the world’s leading electronics OEM and EMS companies through their revolutionary Freebenchmarking.com suite of cost benchmarking tools. Lytica’s mission is to make good companies more competitive by providing the most trusted e-component market intelligence around pricing, security of supply and compliance. Lytica is based in Ottawa, Canada. For more information, contact Sales@lytica.com.
More Info: https://lytica.com/
News Media Contact:
Shawn Bradley
VP of Business Development
Lytica
613-271-1414 x 229
Shawn_Bradley@lytica.com
