In our last (but not least!) interview from NEXT, Mark and Melanie talked with Sivan Aldor-Noiman and Erik Andrejko about Wellio, an awesome new platform that combines AI and healthy eating. Wellio was developed as a way to not only educate users on the importance of proper nutrition for well-being but to give them their own personal nutritionist.

The data scientists at Wellio started from scratch (pun intended) to create their own food-related database and then began training models so the data could be organized and personalized. Using a combination of human power and machine learning techniques, Wellio learns your preferences, allergies, diets, etc. and will make healthy decisions for you based on these key facts. It chooses recipes, populates a grocery list, and even has the ingredients delivered to your door in time for dinner!

Sivan Aldor-Noiman

Sivan heads Data Science for Wellio, an early stage startup in the FoodTech space that is helping people eat better. In Wellio, her team delivers models that help inspire, empower and adapt to people’s eating needs, cooking abilities and health constraints. She began her career in the Israeli military serving as an instructor for an anti-tank missile unit (please don’t think Rambo, think more like a classroom teacher). Sivan then transitioned to school and received her undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering and a Master in Statistics from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. She moved to the U.S. to complete a Ph.D. degree in Statistics from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. In her previous job, Sivan ended up leading several Data Science teams and learned that she really liked leading technical people since she got to learn a lot from them. Ultimately, she missed the smaller company mentality, so she is back in the startup world. Sivan was once asked to define herself so here goes: “I am an enthusiastic disagreeable giver and a constant empirical driven learner”.

Erik Andrejko

Erik has spent his career making a positive impact on the world through mathematics. He is a co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Wellio - an early stage startup applying AI to the intersection of food and human health. Previously, Erik lead the data science and research organization at The Climate Corporation, which applies data science to solve challenging problems in numerous domains including climatology, agronomic modeling and geospatial applications. When not analyzing interesting datasets, Erik can often be found riding up some incline on a bicycle or cooking.

Cool things of the week

Summary of Google Cloud Next Tokyo site
Deep Learning Indaba GCP Credit Awards site
Data Studio and Dataprep are now generally available blog
- DS: BI analyze more than 500 other data sources via more than 100 partner-built connectors and used by over a million people globally
- DP: new look, team collab and more analytics features blog
Announcing general availability of Cloud Memorystore for Redis blog
Coursera Advanced Machine Learning with TensorFlow with GCP blog
- Webinar on October 9th at 9AM PST to learn more
Simplifying ML predictions with Google Cloud Functions blog
50 Best Cloud Security Podcasts site
- GCP Podcast Episode #100: Vint Cerf: past, present, and future of the internet podcast

Interview

Questions of the week

Is Inbox going away?

Where can you find us next?

We’ll both be at Strangeloop.

Mark will probably be at Unite L.A. in October.

Melanie speaking at Monktoberfest Oct 4th in Portland, Maine.

Wellio with Sivan Aldor-Noiman and Erik Andrejko

Google Cloud Platform Podcast