Northampton-raised AI pioneer Honoured by the King with OBE— Now Working on a Cure for Ageing
"This belongs as much to the people I work with as it does to me. I grew up in Northampton, and I'm proud of where I started”
A Northampton-born artificial intelligence pioneer whose technology helped shape the modern mobile phone has been awarded an OBE in the King's Birthday Honours.
Professor Ronjon Nag, who was raised in Northampton and attended Northampton School for Boys, has been appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to entrepreneurship and artificial intelligence.
Prof Nag has spent decades at the forefront of technological innovation, helping to develop speech and handwriting recognition systems long before smartphones became commonplace. Technology pioneered through companies he founded or advised went on to be acquired by major firms including Motorola, BlackBerry and Apple.
His achievements were recognised internationally in 2024 when he was inducted into Silicon Valley's Engineering Hall of Fame alongside some of the biggest names in technology, including the founders of Apple, HP and Intel.
The son of an immigrant who arrived in Britain from India with just £3 in his pocket, Prof Nag said he remained proud of his Northampton roots.
He said: "This belongs as much to the people I work with as it does to me. I grew up in Northampton, and I'm proud of where I started. What keeps me going is the work ahead – using AI to take on ageing and the diseases that come with it."
After leaving Northampton School for Boys, Prof Nag studied at the University of Birmingham, where he built his first artificial intelligence system as an undergraduate. He later continued his studies at Cambridge, MIT and Stanford.
Today, he is founder and chief executive of Agemica, a company using artificial intelligence to develop therapies aimed at tackling diseases associated with ageing. He also teaches medicine at Stanford University and divides his time between the UK and Silicon Valley.