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Jo Varshney, the founder and CEO of AI-enabled, R&D decisions de-risker for drug development has been awarded the Gold Stevie Award in the healthcare category in the 20th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business. Varshney was among seven finalists for “Most Innovative Woman of the Year— Healthcare”.  The Stevie Awards honor the world’s top women entrepreneurs, executives, employees, and the organizations they run. This year’s Stevie Awards for Women in Business received more than 1,600 nominations by organizations and individuals for consideration across 100 categories.

“I am honored to be chosen as the 2023 recipient of the Gold Stevie Award alongside so many influential women in the healthcare field from all over the world,” said Varshney. “This award is a testament to each woman who has dedicated their lives to innovation in the healthcare industry.”

Originally from India, Varshney moved to the United States in 2010 to study comparative oncology, genomics, and bioinformatics. Through her research, Varshney discovered the difficulties of translating drug candidates from the lab to clinical trials. Varshney built out the concept in a hackathon, won, and founded VeriSIM Life shortly after.

Varshney was nominated for the Healthcare Stevie Award for her leadership in the novel use of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to improve the value of drug candidate intellectual property early in the development lifecycle. VeriSIM Life’s technology uses AI and ML to derive a drug development “credit score,” which radically decreases the risk of errors and failure in the drug research process, improves clinical trials and early patient application success rates, and ultimately decreases time-to-market for novel therapeutics.