Professional Experience
Dr. Adrian Raudaschl
Principal Product Manager at Elsevier
Former NHS doctor who traded his stethoscope for Python scripts and never looked back. Known for turning "what if we tried GPT-2?" into Scopus AI, holding multiple RAG patents, and explaining complex tech through cartoon cats.
My Approach
Define "What Good Looks Like"
I believe in defining "what good looks like" before diving in, whether it's building AI products or making pasta sauce. My approach combines the TARS framework with Amazon's "working backwards" method, often starting with fictional press releases that clarify real customer impact.
Medical Training Never Leaves
The "working backwards" approach became my secret weapon. When developing Scopus AI, we started by writing a press release announcing "researchers discover papers 40% faster." This clarity united our team. It's a bit like medicine: you can't treat symptoms without understanding the underlying condition.
Core Competencies
Product Skills
- Product Strategy
- Working Backwards Methodology
- Strategic Innovation Execution
- OKRs/KPIs Design
Technical Expertise
- ElasticSearch (Lexical + Semantic)
- Python
- Graph Database Design (Neo4j)
- Vector Space Modeling
AI-Powered Technologies
- Large Language Models
- Responsible AI
Healthcare & Clinical
- Clinical Medical Practice
- Healthcare Regulation
- Patient Safety
- Medical Research
Work Experience
In 2020, whilst everyone found their pandemic passions - sourdough, puzzles, new hobbies - I found mine in experimenting with GPT-2. I built Scopus AI prototype from scratch, along with the RAG-Fusion algorithm that became the foundation for Elsevier's AI initiatives. Working with brilliant minds like Henry Cleland and Erik Schwartz, this became our first AI product - Scopus AI - which I went on to lead the team to build in 2023.
- Built Scopus AI from scratch in five weeks (yes, really). Now millions of researchers discover papers they'd never find with traditional search. Customer satisfaction: 4.5/5. My parents still don't quite understand what I do, but they're proud.
- Led the transition from keyword matching to semantic understanding, improving search relevance by 40% for over 100M users across five products.
- Hold multiple patents including RAG Fusion (the one I accidentally called "Forget RAG" in a moment of enthusiasm). Open-source implementations have over 800 GitHub stars. Still surprised people actually use it.
- Pioneered AI ethics frameworks for academic search, ensuring transparency in how AI surfaces and ranks research.
Coming in to improve acquisition and onboarding, Mendeley became my product management bootcamp. I learned how academics actually work — discovering papers, building libraries, writing research.
Through proper A/B testing, user research, and cross-team collaboration, I implemented onboarding flows that actually worked. But the real education came from rebuilding search from scratch — understanding how to make discovery faster and more intuitive for researchers.
- Rebuilt search from the ground up: Led complete overhaul of Mendeley's search, creating a tool that genuinely helped researchers build better libraries. This deep dive into search tech became the foundation for my later AI work.
- Doubled acquisitions after the search integration — a massive success that gave leadership confidence to trust me with bigger projects touching search across all products, from Scopus to ScienceDirect.
- Improved onboarding flows that increased new user engagement 3x, which in turn improved overall product retention by 25%.
- Learned the fundamentals: user behaviour analysis, A/B testing, measuring real product success, understanding needs vs assumptions — skills that define everything I build today.
Team achievements and collaborative success at Elsevier.
Left medicine to "work with computers" (my parents' version). Actually, I was turning chemotherapy into superhero stories for sick children.
Learnt that if you can explain cancer treatment to a 7-year-old through comics, you can explain AI to executives (similar attention spans, I jest... mostly).
In full superhero mode - bringing medical education to life for children
- Our comics reached millions of children globally. The skill of making complex things simple never left me. Now I use cartoon cats to explain vector embeddings in board meetings. It works better than you'd think.
- Grew user base by 200% while ensuring medical accuracy and child safety in everything we built.
Turning complex medical concepts into engaging stories for children through creative sketching and character development.
Night shifts. Multiple bleepers. Decisions that couldn't wait.
The NHS teaches you to prioritise like nothing else (when three emergencies happen simultaneously, you learn fast). Now I handle Slack notifications instead of cardiac arrests, but the triage skills remain the same. Just fewer bodily fluids involved.
- Returned to programming after putting tech on hold for medical school. Self-taught Objective-C to build Ward Round for iPod Touch — helping junior doctors survive brutal teaching sessions. This became the huge turning point that brought me back to technology.
- Awarded Junior Doctor Representative of the Year by the Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Glasgow.
During my medical career at NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde - the foundation that shaped my approach to problem-solving.
Junior Doctor Rep of the Year Award
Ward Round app prototype
Technical architecture planning
Side Projects
Fun experiments & weekend builds
IAM46 - Live tracking prototype (2015)
Built a real-time tracking system for activities and locations. Early exploration into data visualization.
Paper of the Day Chrome Extension
Used ML to surface trending academic papers with beautiful Unsplash backgrounds. Making research discovery delightful.
3D Medical Education Characters
Designed 3D characters to teach children about insulin management. Combining art and medical education.
Patents & Innovations
RAG Fusion
My "Forget RAG, the Future is RAG-Fusion" article was meant to be a quirky deep dive. It accidentally became a thing. Now it's a pending patent for making AI search actually understand what you're looking for, not just match keywords. The open-source implementation has over 800 stars.
SeqRAG
"Agents for the rest of us" started as a blog post about making AI agents less intimidating. Turned into a patent-pending framework for sequential reasoning. Sometimes the best innovations come from trying to explain things simply.
Vector-Based Research Trend Analysis
Currently building: a system that uses vector maths to spot research trends before they're trendy. Think of it as a crystal ball for academia, but with more linear algebra and fewer mystic vibes (though I did once use tarot cards for sprint planning, and it worked).
Education
University of Glasgow
- Bachelor of Medicine
- Bachelor of Surgery
Professional Development
Formal Education
- Mastering Product Management
Reforge (2022)
- Product Management Course
General Assembly (2015)
Self-Learning
- iOS Development
Self-taught (2010-2013)
- AI/ML Technologies
Continuous learning (2018-Present)
Personal Interests
Cultural Exploration
Exploring Britain's oddest local traditions (cheese rolling, anyone?). There's philosophy in the absurd.
Creative Pursuits
AI-assisted cooking experiments, sketching comics to explain things, occasionally dressing like I'm from Dune.
Coding & Philosophy
Applied philosophy enthusiast. Still code for fun (the medical degree didn't kill the computer nerd).
Publications
Industry Publications
"Enhancing Search Relevance: User-Driven Personalized Vector Search"
Proceedings of the 7th Annual RELX Search Summit, 2024
"Using ChatGPT to Evaluate Search Results"
Proceedings of the 7th Annual RELX Search Summit, 2024
"An Efficient Method for Identifying Conflicts of Interest in Peer Review Using Graph Analysis"
Proceedings of the 6th Annual RELX Search Summit, 2022
Medical Publications
Get in Touch
Fancy a chat about AI, product strategy, or why cartoon cats make everything better? I'm always up for interesting conversations. Find me on LinkedIn for professional things, GitHub for code things, or Medium for "what if we tried this?" things.
Looking for a speaker?
I speak at conferences about AI, product management, and why your RAG pipeline probably needs fixing. Also available for explaining complex tech through increasingly ridiculous analogies. Drop me a message on LinkedIn.
You scrolled all the way down! Yes, still a Dragon Ball fan. Used to fill notebooks with Sonic character designs too. Some things never change.