Ashleigh Myall is a lifelong technologist who began building and modifying computers at age 12. Despite being told he would never attend university by a teacher at the beginning of secondary school, he studied computer science and finance at university, initially focused on developing stock trading AI algorithms—before pivoting to public health after working on biodefense applications for infection diagnosis. This transition was supported by two scholarships, one for his Master’s in Bioinformatics and another for a PhD in Applied Mathematics at Imperial College London and The Alan Turing Institute, where he specialised in graph-based machine learning for biomedical research and went on to win an additional >£100,000 in prizes and awards for his doctorate.

The core innovation behind NEX was developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Early in his PhD, Ashleigh was tasked with building ICU demand forecasting models for one of the UK’s largest hospital systems. Pausing his PhD research, he developed algorithms which guided emergency decisions on ward conversions and capacity planning at the height of the pandemic, demonstrating the life-saving potential of predictive tools in frontline healthcare. Motivated to translate academic insights into real-world systems, he founded NEX to build next-generation decision support tools for infection management—tools designed to be globally scalable and clinically impactful.

Ashleigh’s work has been cited by the World Health Organisation keynotes, presented to the UK Health Security Agency, and featured in The Lancet Digital Health. He has led research efforts globally to adapt AI-driven surveillance to diverse healthcare settings—from advanced national systems to resource-constrained environments. He has collaborated with organisations including the NHS, DeepMind, and international research centres, and currently holds an honorary research fellow position in the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London.

At NEX, Ashleigh works both on the technology and commercial strategy, building the intelligent infrastructure for infection prevention with a vision to make healthcare systems everywhere more equitable, proactive, and resilient to future outbreaks.