BioData

Neil Deshmukh is a social entrepreneur, tackling problems that affect unserved communities. He is the founder and CEO of PlantumAI LLC., an AI-app platform that combines novel algorithms and human expertise to provide under-resourced farmers with crop advice. He is also a co-founder and the CTO of VocalEyesAI Inc., which develops technology to enable low-vision individuals to use phones to navigate their environment, identify objects, read text, and more. 

For these endeavors, he has been honored as a Global Teen Leader and TIME Magazine - Davos (World Economic Forum) Young Innovator, and awarded the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes and the Straubel Leadership Award. Recently, he has also been honored as a United States Presidential Scholar, National Geographic Young Explorer, Coca-Cola Scholar, and as a Diversity in Action “20 Under 20” Innovator.

Over the last few years, working on many projects, he explored the intersection of computer science and healthcare, through bioinformatics, publishing four first-author research papers in peer-reviewed journals. His projects have obtained Grand Awards at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in both 2017 and 2019, along with the 1st Place Grand Award at the International BioGENEius Biotechnology Challenge. He has been selected as a Regeneron Science Talent Search Scholar for his research.

He is attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for his undergraduate studies. Outside of school, he enjoys mentoring and teaching others about technology through workshops, classes, and presentations. For the last three years, Neil has taught machine learning at many events, including the World Maker Faire and the FIRST Robotics World events, and was selected as a World Science Scholar. He has also given a TEDx talk about the benefits and limitations of AI. 

Neil is dedicated to identifying societal problems that have remained overlooked, and developing comprehensive solutions that incorporate novel technologies and community involvement, to help people around our world.