New Company, Via Science, Created to Leverage REFS 'Big Data' Supercomputer Technology Across Multiple Industry Applications

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 2, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Via Science debuted today as a "big data" analytics company to enable partners across a spectrum of industries turn increasing quantities of "data exhaust" into computational models that predict future outcomes under billions of "what if?" scenarios. High-throughput simulations of interventions into these models are used to uncover the "needles in a haystack" that drive increased productivity, revenues and the identification of cost-saving measures. Via Science's platform, REFS™ (Reverse Engineering/Forward Simulation), has been utilized for drug discovery and development in the pharmaceutical industry for years by industry leaders such as Biogen-Idec, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer, and marketed and supported by GNS (Gene Network Sciences), now a subsidiary of Via Science under the new name GNS Healthcare.  Via Science's second subsidiary, Fina Technologies, which recently raised $4.5 million Series A last December, is leveraging REFS technology for quantitative financial trading in the financial markets.

"Our REFS technology and applications have the power to help industries get their arms around the exponential increases in data being captured in this new era of information – via science," stated Colin Hill, CEO of Via Science. "Our technology puts us on the cutting edge of generating and extracting hypotheses from data in an automated manner with supercomputers. This positions us well to incubate and launch new companies across a growing number of industry verticals and become a big data computing powerhouse with several market-leading operating companies."

Via Science's new board member, Duncan McFarland, has served as a director of NYSE Euronext and its predecessors since June 2006. He retired in June 2004 as the chairman and chief executive officer of Wellington Management Company, one of the largest global, independent investment managers, after a career of nearly 40 years. He currently serves on the board of two public companies, The Asia Pacific Fund, Inc. and Gannett Co., Inc. Mr. McFarland formerly served as a trustee of the Financial Accounting Foundation (parent of the Financial Accounting Standards Board). Mr. McFarland also serves as a trustee of the Claneil Foundation, which primarily serves communities within the greater Philadelphia region, and the Bromley Charitable Trust. He is also a director of New Profit, Inc., a non-government organization that primarily serves inner-city constituencies. He is also a trustee of RARE, Inc., a global environmental organization.

About REFS

REFS is comprised of integrated machine learning algorithms and software that extract "causal" relationships from complex, multi-dimensional data and enable the simulation of billions of "what if?" hypotheses to explore novel unseen conditions and predictions forward in time. This model-centric discovery and simulation approach represents a paradigm shift in data analysis, leapfrogging existing approaches such as high-dimensional pattern matching. Via Science has already successfully exploited the REFS platform in genomics-based drug development, quantitative financial trading, and E-commerce.

About Via Science

Via Science creates and applies next-generation machine learning and simulation platforms to "big data" problems across a spectrum of industries.  The mission of Via Science is fulfilled by incubating and launching market leading companies led by visionary domain experts. www.viascience.com

About Fina Technologies

Fina Technologies, a subsidiary of Via Science, applies highly parallel supercomputing technology combined with cutting-edge machine learning techniques to create quantitative trading algorithms with strong out-of-sample predictive power.  Fina partners with sophisticated trading houses and funds to apply its robust modeling framework to a variety of trading algorithms from straightforward time series prediction to value estimation and factor models.  www.finatechnologies.com

About GNS Healthcare

GNS Heathcare, a subsidiary of Via Science, is a healthcare IT company that applies machine learning and simulation technology to optimize patient treatment in partnership with health insurance companies, pharmacy benefit managers, health care providers, and pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.  GNS Healthcare is the information guru between drug makers and drug buyers matching drugs to patients to deliver on the promise of "smart" medicine. www.gnshealthcare.com

SOURCE Via Science