When Ken Lau (’25SPS, Information & Knowledge Strategy) first began exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence and personal wellness, he was working as a senior consultant at Deloitte, advising financial institutions on digital transformation. His career had already taken him through DBS Bank, one of Asia's most digitally advanced financial institutions, where he witnessed firsthand how data-driven personalization could reshape an entire industry. But it was at Columbia SPS that he found the intellectual framework to channel those insights into something entirely new: NaturalQ, an AI-powered health and wellness app that uses knowledge graph technology to deliver hyper-personalized wellbeing content to its users.
“At DBS, I saw how customer science — understanding individual behavior through data — could transform a traditional bank into a digital leader,” Ken recalls. “I kept thinking: What if we could apply that same philosophy to something even more personal, people's health and wellbeing?”
That question became the seed for NaturalQ, which Ken began building while studying in the M.S. in Information & Knowledge Strategy (IKNS) program at Columbia SPS. The app combines a proprietary knowledge graph, a structured network of interconnected wellness concepts, natural therapy principles, nutrition science, and mindfulness research, with generative AI to produce articles, insights, and recommendations uniquely tailored to each user's health profile and reading behavior.
Can you tell us about what brought you to the IKNS program at Columbia SPS?
I had spent years in consulting and banking, helping large organizations make sense of their data and transform their operations. At Deloitte, I was advising clients on digital strategy, and at DBS, I was immersed in one of the world's most successful digital banking transformations. But I realised that while I understood the business of data, I wanted a deeper understanding of how knowledge itself is structured, discovered, and made actionable, especially in the age of AI.
The IKNS program was exactly what I was looking for. It wasn’t just about technology or just about strategy. It was about the fundamental question of how organizations and systems can create, organize, and leverage knowledge. That’s the foundation of everything I’ve built with NaturalQ.
How did the IKNS curriculum prepare you to build NaturalQ?
Every class I took at Columbia directly contributed to what NaturalQ is today. In Findability, Semantic Modeling, and Computational Classification, I learned how to structure information so that machines, and people, can discover meaningful connections between concepts. That class gave me the theoretical grounding for NaturalQ's knowledge graph, where topics like sleep, nutrition, natural therapy, and stress management are interconnected through semantic relationships that the AI traverses to generate personalized content.
Artificial Intelligence and the Knowledge-driven Organization was transformative. It taught me to think about AI not as a standalone tool but as something that must be embedded within a knowledge architecture to be truly useful. NaturalQ doesn’t just generate articles with AI. It generates articles informed by a structured knowledge graph that understands how wellness concepts relate to each other and to the individual user.
In Digital Workplace and Transformation, I studied how digital tools reshape user behavior and organizational culture. That thinking directly influenced how I designed NaturalQ’s engagement mechanics. The app uses progressive gamification, where users watch their personal “knowledge universe” grow more complex as they read more, creating a sense of investment and ownership over their wellness journey.
And Business Analytics gave me the quantitative rigor to measure what matters: retention, engagement depth, content relevance scores. Every feature in NaturalQ is instrumented and measured.
Tell us about your independent study with Professor Meinrenken.
During my time at Columbia, I had the opportunity to conduct independent research with Christoph Meinrenken, titled Transformation into a Digital Bank: Customer Science and Its Adaptation in DBS’s Operations. That research examined how DBS Bank leveraged customer data science, behavioral analytics, personalization engines, and predictive models, to transform from a traditional bank into what was recognized as the “World’s Best Digital Bank.”
That research was pivotal for NaturalQ. The core insight was that personalization at scale requires three things: a deep understanding of individual behavior, a structured knowledge base to draw from, and an AI layer that connects the two in real time. DBS did this for banking. NaturalQ does this for wellness.
What makes NaturalQ different from other health apps?
Most wellness apps are either content libraries, where everyone sees the same articles, or chatbots that respond to queries but lack depth. NaturalQ is neither. It’s built on a Neo4j knowledge graph with hundreds of interconnected health and wellness concepts. When the AI generates an article for you, it’s not pulling from a generic template. It’s traversing your personal knowledge graph, understanding which topics you’ve engaged with, which connections you’ve explored, and what gaps remain in your wellness understanding.
The app also features what I call the “Knowledge Universe,” an interactive visualization of your personal knowledge graph that grows more complex as you read. Users can literally see their understanding expand, which creates a powerful feedback loop. It’s the same principle behind the most engaging digital products: make progress visible and meaningful.
We also integrate natural therapy and holistic wellness practices alongside evidence-based health science, which resonates deeply with our audience. The knowledge graph allows us to surface connections between concepts like breathwork, herbal remedies, and modern research on stress hormones or gut health, bridging traditional wisdom and contemporary science in a way that feels both credible and accessible.
What's next for NaturalQ?
We're currently live on the App Store and growing our user base across Asia. The next phase is deepening the personalization, using reading patterns and engagement data to make the knowledge graph increasingly reflective of each individual user’s wellness journey. We’re also exploring partnerships with wellness practitioners and holistic health clinics to bring professional-grade knowledge into the graph.
Looking back, I can trace a direct line from my first class at Columbia to where NaturalQ is today. The IKNS program didn’t just teach me about knowledge management. It taught me how to build knowledge systems that create real value in people's lives. That’s exactly what NaturalQ does every day.
In August 2026, NaturalQ is available at naturalq.ai/download. The app features AI-generated personalized wellness articles, an interactive knowledge graph visualization, mindfulness content, and gamified engagement mechanics, all built on the knowledge strategy principles Ken studied at Columbia SPS.
Views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Columbia University School of Professional Studies or Columbia University.
About Columbia's IKNS Degree
Columbia University’s M.S. in Information & Knowledge Strategy (IKNS) degree integrates data, people, and strategy skills for the AI age. The flexible and interdisciplinary curriculum trains leaders across the entire value chain of data-driven management: Getting the data and analytics right (e.g., AI adoption, business analytics), creating a high-performing, people-centric culture (collaboration, team/project management, organizational psychology), and finally the right change management to turn your strategy into reality.
IKNS is available full-time or part-time, online or in-person on Columbia’s landmarked campus right here in New York City. To maximize opportunities for networking and community building, our online students join our New York-based students on Columbia’s campus for three in-person Residencies during their studies. The STEM-designated Master of Science degree offers International Students (F-1/J-1 visa) an opportunity for Curricular Practical Training during their studies (CPT) and 3 years of work authorization in the US upon completing their studies (OPT).
Students train under world-class faculty, including former and current executives from Google, IBM, NASA, and Oliver Wyman, and join a powerful global alumni network in coveted positions, including at Alphabet, Goldman Sachs, Nike, Pfizer, and the World Bank.
For more IKNS insights, news, and events, please go to our website, connect with us on LinkedIn, or attend one of our online info sessions. Visit the School of Professional Studies website to learn more about the SPS Student Experience.
