There’s no wrong path to a career in lifesaving AI

“I'm glad that I dropped out of university. It was the best thing that could have happened to me.”

Not words you would expect from a respected and accomplished AI scientist, right? Because surely to be at the top of your game takes a single unbroken trajectory of success? However, life isn’t like that for most of us and it’s pretty rare to know precisely what your career goals are when you’re just a teenager.

Certainly, Simon Fisher PhD, Senior Scientist in AI Research, and Russell Hung, a Senior AI Scientist, took some interesting twists and turns on their way to working at Canon Medical Research Europe. And there’s no doubt that this road less travelled made them the scientists they are today.

Like so many young people, Simon found making life-defining decisions at the age of 17 incredibly overwhelming and decided that university would have to wait until he knew what he wanted to do. In the meantime, he took a job at a care home for the elderly – the kind of work that’s a real eye-opener for any age. “I remember my first day – I was completely out of my depth,” he remembers. “But I grew to love it and the people I worked with. I learnt a lot.”

It also gave him the space and time to consider what’s next, and he settled upon a degree in biochemistry. “But I still hadn't really got my teeth into life,” he admits. And so, at the end of his second year, he dropped out. “You’re so young when you are expected to make these decisions. I hadn’t even really found ‘me’ yet.” He’d done holiday work as a kitchen porter, so was familiar with that world and became a commis chef – the lowest, and arguably toughest, job in a professional kitchen. “It was full time for a year, and I don't think there is a harder job, in terms of demand, than a chef.”

Then, he says, “something clicked. I knew what I wanted to do and how to achieve it. So, I returned to university to study pharmacology and immunology”. With no fear of hard work, he also took a night job at a fast-food restaurant, but was still awarded ‘top performing student’ in his final year.

Russell, on the other hand, always knew that he was a scientist. “I liked experiments,” he smiles. “Writing proposals and being in the lab. I always wanted to know how things work.” He studied biotechnology at home in Hong Kong, but between his undergraduate and master’s degree, Russell found himself in jobs that seemed completely out of character. “I was very shy,” he admits. “I didn’t really know how to talk to people. But because of my degree, I went into a very technical customer service role for medical equipment.”

Each day was spent speaking to customers in hospitals – in labs, on wards and even doctors who were with patients as they called. “My technical knowledge got me the job, but I had to learn how to work with people,” he says. “It really changed who I am.” He then went into sales and marketing, which, he says, was “one of the toughest jobs that I’ve ever had.” He had to completely flip his way of thinking – from being the kid who took things apart to understand how they functioned, he now had to assess how things might feel. “A lot of it had nothing to do with the product. It was how easy you are to work with, how good the service is, does the customer trust you? I struggled with that at the start.”

While their backgrounds were very different, Simon and Russell have some fundamental similarities – they are both scientists, yes, but they are also resourceful, inquisitive problem solvers. And this is how they found their way to Canon Medical Research Europe. For Russell, it was after he travelled to the UK to study for a master’s in bioinformatics. And for Simon, it was during his PhD in pharmacogenomics.

In separate, but similarly practical, settings, they produced a lot of data to wrangle, understand and learn from (“I spent a lot of time at the lab bench, working with DNA,” adds Simon). And they could either wait for someone else to process it into a shape they could work with or figure out how to do it themselves. “So, I started to learn how to code and… I loved it. I was at the end of my PhD and thought maybe I should consider this as a career.” Russell too found that coding changed the way he thought about his future. So, instead of heading down the PhD path, he confidently decided to combine his scientific knowledge with a freshly acquired commercial instinct and apply for a role at Canon.

Today, as AI scientists, they make sense of complex biological datasets to help doctors make smarter, faster decisions about patient care. This currently means working with enormous amounts of data to understand and identify genetic mutations in tumours and how to predict the likelihood of them being treatable, or even returning, without using invasive procedures, like biopsies. What they work on today could be genuinely lifechanging tomorrow.

They both believe that their professional expertise is bolstered by the perspectives they gained outside of academia. Overcoming their own fears and challenges with courage, stepping out of their comfort zones, holding the hands of frightened elderly people. “When I look at a medical scan and see a tumour or a model for studying diseases, it can make me sad because I know that these datasets are produced from real people,” explains Simon. “And I know the reality of caring for people in their last stages of life.” And even as they sit in front of screens filled with strings of code, they never forget this. Because what is it all for if not for giving us our best shot at life?