Valeria Kogan, CEO and Co-Founder Fermata

With a Ph.D. in bioinformatics, Valeria Kogan is the founder and chief innovation officer of AgTech company Fermata and cofounder of Smartomica, a company developing an AI-based platform that assists oncologists in diagnosing severe cancer patients. In 2022, she was selected as one of Forbes’ 30 under 30. Valeria has her Ph. D in Bioinformatics from Ariel University, Israel.

Q1. You were working in the field of bioinformatics and AI and its use in human disease diagnostics. What drew you to agriculture, specifically making agriculture sustainable with AI?

My path to agriculture was pretty accidental! In 2018-2019, while doing my PhD in bioinformatics, I was fascinated by all the news about the potential of computer vision in the medical field—the first articles showed how simple phone images could be used to diagnose melanoma. It sounded exceptional at the time. Articles about early cancer detection through medical imaging were drawing a lot of attention and investment; everyone was talking about it.
Around the same time, a friend of a friend, a tomato producer, was looking for someone with some knowledge of AI to discuss its potential applications in agriculture. This was the first time I visited a tomato greenhouse. I was surprised, I had no idea how vegetable production worked or how important plant health is. Observing the scale of the food industry and the challenges faced by farmers sparked my interest in applying imaging techniques to agriculture. I went home and researched about vision in agriculture and saw a huge opportunity. One thing was clear, the technical challenges were very similar. It inspired me to explore the intersection of technology and agriculture.

Q2. Fermata is your second company. Before Fermata you co-founded SmartOmica. What challenges have you faced and are facing in building these companies?

I would say that the most challenging part of building any company isn’t the technology; it is the people. I am still mastering this skill, and the path is long. When you’re building a company from scratch, the environment is very dynamic and challenging and you go through many different phases and need different people on board at each stage. Recognizing these shifts in time, clearly defining what your company is at each moment, and ensuring the team is well-suited for the challenges ahead is incredibly difficult. It is a learning curve!
The research shows that the medicine, agriculture, and construction spaces are the most conservative and non-digitalized fields, even though so much technology is available. However, the adoption rate is poor. On the other hand, it is a lot easier to test a product or technology for agriculture in comparison with medicine and has a shorter feedback time.

Q3. What gives you the confidence to go forward and motivates you to be a leader in and make an impact in the bio-agriculture?

The biggest motivation for me is our customers. Nothing drives me as much as getting positive feedback on our products and knowing that what we do truly helps people. I try to allocate time to visit our customers as much as I can to learn from them! I spend more time on external conversations rather than internal ones. When a new project is launched, I love being there to observe farmers’ reactions when we give them access to the platform and they see the images of their plants. This motivates me!

Q4. BioAg is rapidly evolving and has been revolutionized by technology and innovations. What is going to be the next big leap in the agriculture industry in terms of the use of AI? Also, please share your thoughts on making these AI-based technologies more accessible and affordable.

I believe there is a huge opportunity for collaboration in the agricultural sector. I think the next big breakthrough lies not so much in one technology but in the synergies between different ones. Historically, the agriculture space has been dominated by a few large companies with a less collaborative culture. This is now changing, with large players becoming more open and new collaboration opportunities emerging from smaller players. Compared to medicine, agriculture still lacks data-sharing protocols or standards that would allow different players to work with the same data. Once this changes, we’ll see tremendous collaborative growth.
We were selected in Microsoft’s accelerator AI for good and this was one of the questions I had for the accelerator team. 25% of the global water is wasted. It is wasted on the crops that never reach the market, as 30% of the harvest is lost. The need to reduce losses and increase resource use efficiency is real. The technology is spreading amongst the farming community but like every technology it will take time. Once a technology is well tried and established the cost associated with it reduces over time and percolates to the masses. It is just a matter of time.

Q5. What are your future aspirations professionally and personally? Where do you see Fermata in the next decade?

I see Fermata as one of the driving forces for building a collaborative culture in the agricultural space. We work hard to bring our technology to the farmers not just by ourselves, but also by empowering other products, like drones, and robots. We aim to enhance agricultural practices through advanced imaging and AI technologies. We believe it is important to understand the context to improve plant health diagnostics. We want to incorporate more data and context beyond imaging, aiming for a holistic approach to plant health. You will soon see us entering the markets of North America, Europe, and Australia. I hope that within the next decade, Fermata will become “Intel inside” for computer vision in agriculture, and I will learn a lot during this journey.