What Ifs® is a Glassbox AI based causal simulation OS that shows teams what will happen before they execute.
We turn complex regulatory and operational work into clear, testable simulations that reveal risks, strengthen training, and improve outcomes across Pharma and Medical Devices manufacturing.
Our vision is to build a world where organizations can understand the consequences of their decisions before they act. We believe high‑stakes work deserves clarity, not guesswork —
So we create causal Glassbox Based simulations that reveal risks, strengthen training, and expose hidden pathways to better outcomes.
By turning complex operations into transparent, testable models, we help teams move from reactive fixes to confident, evidence‑based action.
Founder & CEO | PhD Candidate | Regulatory Sciences Strategist
Architect of the Glass‑Box AI‑Based PreCheck Compliance Engine
Esther Cashbaugh is the Founder and CEO of What Ifs, architecting a regulatory infrastructure built for a world where innovation moves at the speed of AI while manufacturing still runs on paperwork.
Discovering Structural Latency
As a PhD candidate, Esther identified Structural Latency—the hidden friction between high‑dimensional scientific innovation and the physical constraints of the factory floor.
Adding Physics to Regulatory Science
With training in Regulatory Sciences and an MBA in Market Research and Analysis that sharpened her evidence‑driven decision logic, Esther brought regulatory expertise and system architecture to the problem, collaborating with her physicist co‑founder to integrate physics‑based reasoning into a functional architecture that bridges regulatory intent and engineering reality.
Building the Industrial Cortex
She leads the development of the Industrial Cortex—a differentiable physics engine architected in collaboration with her physicist co‑founder to generate audit‑ready models for Pharma and MedTech and solve the Zero‑Run Problem.
Philosophy
Compliance anchored to Math—not paperwork—turns manufacturing into a predictable, high‑reliability system.
Co-Founder & CTO | Quantum Engineer & Computational Physicist | KTH (Royal Institute of Technology)Sweden | HPC, Tensor Networks & Machine Learning | JAX-Native Physics | Quantum Security | Computational Biology
The Asymmetric Advantage
A researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, Shek is driven by a single vision:
Actualizing the abstract. He is a statistical anomaly in the engineering market—a category‑of‑one physicist who possesses the full stack of Computational Biology, JAX-Native Physics, and Quantum Security.
While others rely on standard libraries, Shek architects the math from scratch. He employs Tensor Networks and proprietary SciML architectures to replace legacy solvers, achieving proven 67x to 270x speedups in complex fluid dynamics simulations.
The Bio‑Physics Bridge
Possessing a rare dual-background in Biology and High-Performance Computing (HPC), Shek refuses to treat drugs like water. Instead, he designs for biological reality. His proprietary modeling of Non-Newtonian viscosity and injection-site mechanics enables the Industrial Cortex to predict failure modes that legacy CFD tools routinely miss.
The Impact
He bridges the gap between the biology of the molecule and the physics of the machine. By combining academic rigor with industrial engineering (Ericsson/KTH NQCIS), Shek transforms process modeling from educated guesswork into Glass-Box regulatory assets—creating a grounded, sovereign decision system for the post-verification era.
Steven A. Grossman, JD, is President of HPS Group, LLC and a highly respected policy and regulatory consultant. Expert in Public policy & FDA regulatory consultant (HPS Group).
Senior Software Engineer specializing in high‑performance Python, JAX‑based computation, and scalable cloud architectures. I help teams design and optimize numerical pipelines, accelerate model execution, and build reliable backend systems for scientific and data‑intensive applications.