����TV

BenchSci, a University of Toronto startup that uses artificial intelligence to accelerate the process of drug development, is “changing the tech world” .

Founded in 2015 by Liran Belenzon, who studied business at the Rotman School of Management, Thomas Leung, who was working on his PhD at ����TV in epigenetics, and Elvis Wianda, the startup received early support from the Creative Destruction Lab, the Entrepreneurship Hatchery and Health Innovation Hub (H2i). Today, it has raised nearly $100 million from investors and employs 400 people.

BenchSci’s platform can filter through more than 14 million scientific papers and 64 million products, allowing scientists to assembling a “knowledge graph of who’s done what and with what level of success,” the magazine says – and now helps some 50,000 researchers worldwide.

“While the pharmaceutical companies pay to use the software,” Belenzon tells the magazine, “scientists and students use the platform for free.”