Jie Sun hails from Nanjing, China. She is the co-founder and COO of basys.ai, a start-up incubated at Harvard and MIT. Her career has been rooted in healthcare for the past 8 years, spanning across Singapore, France and the US. The broad exposure in the healthcare consulting, pharma and health data science equip her with the ability to translate healthcare needs into scientific and business questions.

After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Statistics from National University of Singapore, Jie started her career as a healthcare consultant at Research Partnership. She conducted 50+ projects for leading pharma companies such as Pfizer and J&J. She later joined Pierre Fabre, a large French pharmaceutical group in their Toulouse headquarters. In 2017, she was posted back to Singapore to manage the strategic medical business of Pierre Fabre Dermo-Cosmetique in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia. She has forged strong ties with regional research institutions and medical specialists.

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted Jie to make a major career switch to public health. In 2020, Jie quit her corporate job and joined the School of Public Health at National University of Singapore. As part of the essential workforce to fight against COVID, she worked on critical modelling projects commissioned by Ministry of Health in Singapore, on topics including projecting the number of ICUs needed, estimating the size of cryptic infections in the community, and analyzing clinical trials for drugs against COVID. This has resulted in 2 scientific papers on journals such as the Lancet, and a presentation at the Women in Data Science conference in Cambridge, jointly organized by Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Microsoft.

This experience has spurred another bold decision for Jie to pause her career and pursue the Master of Science in Health Data Science at Harvard School of Public Health. During the study, Jie has also worked in the data science and AI operations at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Mass General Hospital. The vibrant healthcare scene at Boston stimulated her to go beyond the conventional career path and create bigger impact. It is through the same Harvard program that she met a like-minded classmate, Amber Nigam. Sharing the same passion and vision towards public health, they co-founded an AI-powered digital health company, basys.ai, through the Harvard Innovation Labs.

basys.ai has the vision to create an effective digital health app that makes living with diabetes like without it. Such an AI-based digital solution can help people with minimal access to health resources. It has received grants from both Harvard and MIT, partnered with Joslin Diabetes Centre to devleop their AI capacity, and were offered a place at the prestigious Norrsken Impact Accelerator. Jie was featured in Harvard Innovation Lab’s Women-led Wednesday program.

Read about Jie Sun on NYC Daily Post.