UTEST

Black Founders Network

Entrepreneurship Week

Dentistry

Research & Innovation

Subheadline

HDAX Therapeutics is focused on developing treatments for peripheral nerve damage, which can result from chemotherapy or radiation

Pain, numbness, sore muscles and even paralysis. These are some of the symptoms of peripheral neuropathy, an often-debilitating condition associated with chemotherapy, radiation and other cancer treatments.

Such peripheral nerve damage can be temporary, but for some, it never goes away.

“There’s often really nothing for these patients except just symptom management and putting fingers and toes in a bucket of ice,” says Nabanita Nawar, who holds a PhD in medicinal chemistry from the University of Toronto.

Nawar is the CEO and a co-founder of HDAX Therapeutics, a startup that grew out of technology developed in U of T Mississauga’s department of chemical and physical sciences. The company is currently working on treatments that focus on HDAC 6, a protein that has been implicated in cardiovascular diseases and neurodegenerative disorders – including the peripheral nerve damage experienced by many cancer patients.

“We are essentially developing new medicine for diseases that have a transport problem in the body,” Nawar says, referring to the protein’s key role in multiple cellular processes.

HDAX’s patented mechanism targets HDAC 6 to return damaged neurons to health.

“Our target, HDAC6, plays a key role in regulating microtubule stability and thus, affects axonal transport,” explained Pimyupa Manaswiyoungkul, who also earned a PhD at U of T and is now chief operations officer at HDAX. “In diseased states for indications that we are targeting, these axonal transports are impaired resulting in nerve degeneration, which results in symptoms in patients.”

By using a “two-site binding modality,” the startup’s technology essentially holds the target with two figurative hands instead of one – like many of its competitors – providing a tighter grip on the protein and a key competitive advantage.

The treatment, still in pre-clinical testing, would be delivered in the form of an oral pill.

(photo by Matthew Volpe)

The HDAX team also plans to apply the startup’s technology to target transport mechanisms in cardio-metabolic diseases, including heart failure.

Manaswiyoungkul met Nawar in the lab when they were pursing doctoral studies. She says Nawar, who was on the medicinal chemistry side, would give her compounds to evaluate.

“The flow of how we worked in the lab helped us connect,” Manaswiyoungkul says.

Working with fellow researchers Elvin de Araujo and Olasunkanmi Olaoye, it wasn’t long before Nawar and Manaswiyoungkul shifted their focus to the challenges of translating their promising research into a viable business.

The team established HDAX in 2021 and received its first big funding injection – and a confidence boost – a few months later when it won a bio-venture pitch competition hosted by Medicine by Design, a U of T institutional strategic initiative focused on regenerative medicine and cell therapy.

“That was the first thing that made us think, ‘OK, this may be a real company – this could really be something.’ It wasn’t just in our heads,” Nawar says.

HDAX has since attracted a total of $1.3 million in funding, Manaswiyoungkul says, noting the company and its five full-time employees is now preparing for its first seed round funding.

The work of Nawar, Manaswiyoungkul and their teammates hasn’t gone unnoticed. The two founders recently earned an unexpected individual accolade: inclusion in the Forbes list of 30 under 30 Torontonians. When the Forbes email landed in Nawar’s inbox, she says she was so surprised she wondered if it was spam.

As it turns out, the duo were nominated by one of their early U of T mentors, Paul Santerre, a professor in the Faculty of Dentistry and the Institute of Biomedical Engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

“The [HDAX] technology circumvents toxicity in neuro and cardiac drugs, with amazing efficacy demonstrated in their neuro models,” Santerre says, adding that Nawar and Manaswiyoungkul “not only accomplished novel, impactful findings during their PhD/post doc training, but did the work to accelerate their evolution to becoming serious entrepreneurs.”

Along the way, the startup received extensive support from the U of T entrepreneurship community, which ranks first in Canada for research-based startups and among the top five globally for university startup accelerators. In particular, HDAX worked with UTEST, the Health Innovation Hub (H2i) and the Black Founders Network.

Santerre says one of the keys to U of T’s successful entrepreneurial support network is its “no wrong door” policy.

“This means, regardless of where you come from at U of T, you will be supported by the incubators that best fit your venture,” he says.

Manaswiyoungkul’s advice for students thinking about making the leap into entrepreneurship? Just go for it.

“U of T is a very accepting community and there’s always someone who has more experience and the willingness to help take your ideas forward.”

From nature to the lab: U of T startup brews more sustainable food ingredients

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 15:22:34 +0000

From nature to the lab: U of T startup brews more sustainable food ingredients

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 03/04/2024 - 10:22

Cutline

Pratish Gawand, who graduated from the University of Toronto with a PhD in chemical engineering in 2014, says many natural flavouring ingredients are produced in small quantities and end up being shipped long distances to the companies that use them (photo by Matthew Volpe)

Geoffrey Vendeville

Topic

Entrepreneurship Week

Chemical Engineering

ThisIsThePlace

Subheadline

Using precision fermentation, Ardra Inc. aims to replace natural flavour ingredients with more sustainable alternatives

Natural ingredients may seem better for the planet, but that’s not always the case.

Consider rose oil. It takes thousands of kilograms of rose petals to extract a single kilogram of the popular fragrance ingredient.

“If a multinational cosmetics or consumer goods company said tomorrow, ‘We’re not going to use any artificial rose oil,’ we couldn’t grow enough roses in the world to supply such a big company,” says Pratish Gawand, who graduated from the University of Toronto with a PhD in chemical engineering in 2014.

Pratish Gawand (photo by Matthew Volpe)

Gawand’s startup, Ardra Inc., aims to replace natural flavour ingredients in food with more sustainable alternatives manufactured using precision fermentation. Think of the fermenting tanks in a brewery, but instead of yeast, Ardra’s technology involves microbes that are genetically engineered to produce high-value compounds rather than ethanol.

Following fermentation, the ingredients must be purified to the high standards of “flavour houses,” where scientists known as flavourists formulate the flavours of food products.

“Humans are much more sensitive to detecting odours than even gas chromatography instruments,” says Gawand, who is Ardra’s chief executive. “We have to meet those kinds of standards, and we have done it.”

Typically produced in small quantities from plants and animals, most natural ingredients end up being shipped long distances to the companies that use them, which comes with a cost to the climate. Ardra’s process, on the other hand, would provide manufacturers with a local and more sustainable source of necessary ingredients.

“This addresses major challenges in the food industry – mainly around sustainability and supply,” Gawand says.

Ardra’s list of products includes heme, the iron-carrying molecule that turns blood red and gives meats their distinctive taste. Fermented heme can be used not only to enhance the taste of plant-based meats but also to give it other meat-like qualities. For example, Gawand says heme is thought to be among the reasons that meat chars on a grill.

Ardra can also ferment leaf-aldehyde, which replicates a variety of flavours including green apple, berry and citrus. And it makes natural petroleum-free butylene glycol, a versatile moisturizing agent often used in shampoos, lotions and cosmetics that is otherwise largely petroleum-based.

Gawand co-founded Ardra in 2016 with his U of T PhD supervisor Radhakrishnan Mahadevan, a professor of chemical engineering and applied chemistry in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and Canada Research Chair in Metabolic Systems Engineering. “U of T was our very first investor,” Gawand says, adding that Ardra received its first investment from the university’s UTEST (University of Toronto Early Stage Technology) program.

(photo by Matthew Volpe)

“The university helped us put the company together, put the patent together and it wrote us our very first cheque.”

Ardra began its journey with butylene glycol technology.

“Krishna [Mahadevan] and I were inventors on that patent, along with Associate Professor Alexander Yakunin and PhD student Kayla Nemr. We assigned the patent to the university and licensed it out,” Gawand says.

Mahadevan, for his part, says his prior experience working with startups, including Geno – a San Diego, Calif.-based company that currently makes a more sustainable version of nylon, among other products – made him keen to explore the commercial potential of his group’s research.

He says Gawand had the passion and drive necessary to translate bench research into a viable business.

“He had a tough work ethic and would go to great lengths to achieve his research goals,” Mahadevan recalls.

He adds that Gawand’s commitment to sustainability also made a strong impression, recalling an essay that his former student wrote and shared with the lab describing the urbanization of the landscape near his hometown in India. (Gawand, an avid birdwatcher in his youth, lamented that new construction near his home drove out the egrets, cormorants and other birds that he remembered seeing on his walks to and from school.)

Ardra has come a long way since it was founded less than decade ago. It has raised more than $4 million in funding and has strategic partnerships with a U.S.-based flavour house and a European company.

Gawand says he hopes Ardra’s success will pave the way for other Canadian companies in the bio-manufacturing sector.

“I want to put the wheels in motion for Canadian bio-manufacturing and precision fermentation,” he says. “From Ardra’s success, I want to get Canada started on bio-industrial innovations.”

U of T among top five university business incubators in the world: UBI Global

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 16:20:53 +0000

U of T among top five university business incubators in the world: UBI Global

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 02/06/2023 - 11:20

Cutline

The BRIDGE at U of T Scarborough is one of several entrepreneurship and innovation hubs on U of T's three campuses (photo by Matthew Dochstader)

Topic

Creative Destruction Lab

Entrepreneurship Hatchery

Global

The University of Toronto has been recognized as one of the top five university business incubators in the world by UBI Global in its latest world benchmark study.

In its 2021-2022 study, UBI Global – a Swedish-based innovation intelligence company with more than 1,000 member organizations – assessed 1895 organizations from 90 countries.

The top organizations were benchmarked across 21 key performance indicators against their global peers based on the value they provide to their innovation ecosystems and client startups.

“The UBI ranking is a reinforcement of all the great work that so many U of T students, faculty and alumni entrepreneurs have been doing,” says Jon French, director of University of Toronto Entrepreneurship, the umbrella organization for the incubators, accelerators and entrepreneurship programs across U of T’s three campuses. “It’s a recognition of how we fare against the best in the world.”

The ranking is particularly notable, French adds, since UBI is one of the only organizations examining both economic and social impact in its global assessment of the post-secondary entrepreneurship space.

“The approach that UBI takes is quite holistic – they measure hard metrics, including funding raised and jobs created, but they also take a look at criteria such as where the mentor network is coming from and how engaged the university’s alumni are,” French says, noting that U of T scored high on all such indicators in the UBI report and takes pride in supporting innovators at all stages of their journey – everyone from idea-stage student entrepreneurs to faculty members and PhD researchers seeking to commercialize their work.

Over the past decade, U of T entrepreneurs have created more than 600 venture-backed companies and secured more than $2.5 billion in investment. U of T Entrepreneurship, for its part, supports current and aspiring entrepreneurs by providing: co-working, meeting and event spaces; mentorship and advisory supports; pitch competitions and prizes; and access to investor networks to secure funding.

U of T’s network of campus acccelerators and incubators in the Greater Toronto Area are currently supporting more than 500 teams working on potential startups.

“It is important that our entrepreneurs have a sense of community – they are surrounded by like-minded people who are excited about innovation and turning ideas and opportunities into companies,” French says. “Across the 10-plus campus accelerators on our three campuses, we currently have over 500 teams that are working on projects that could become companies.”

UBI’s world benchmark study is a third-party assessment, based on a comprehensive survey, that analyzes the impact and performance of business incubators and accelerators from four sectors: university, public, private and corporate. Its framework for analysis was developed in collaboration with an advisory board comprising innovation thought leaders and industry experts.

Other Canadian universities also ranked highly in their categories in the UBI report, including incubators from McGill University, York University, Memorial University and École de technologie supérieure.

Many of the U of T-backed success stories flagged for the UBI survey stemmed from the university’s strength in leading-edge research fields such as quantum computing, biotech, clean tech, advanced manufacturing and machine learning. In particular, French points to the recent announcement of $40 million in federal funding for U of T startup Xanadu Quantum Technologies – an alumnus of the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) at the Rotman School of Management that was founded by former U of T post-doctoral physics researcher Christian Weedbrook – and the more than 150 ventures supported annually by the Health Innovation Hub (H2i).

French noted that U of T’s commitment to entrepreneurship is longstanding, with several incubators and accelerators recently celebrating their 10-year anniversaries. They include CDL, The Hatchery at the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and the UTEST accelerator.

“And now when we look at the new Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus close to opening on the St. George campus, that’s again an example of U of T doubling down on how important innovation and entrepreneurship are to the university,” he says.

U of T’s world-leading innovation network – which includes U of T Scarborough’s The Hub and The BRIDGE, as well as U of T Mississauga’s ICUBE – will be showcased during Entrepreneurship Week from March 6 to 9, featuring more than 15 free in-person, hybrid and virtual public events to teach, inspire and celebrate entrepreneurship on campus.

One flagship event returning in-person for the first time in three years is the True Blue Expo on March 9, where more than 40 U of T startups, accelerators and community partners will be sharing information on their products and services.

“We’ll be highlighting groundbreaking companies during Entrepreneurship Week, including those led by women founders and startups connected to our Black Founders Network,” French says. “All three campuses are represented – it’s really a snapshot of what makes U of T entrepreneurship so special.”

Smartphone app designed by U of T researchers can significantly improve memory recall

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 16:13:24 +0000

Smartphone app designed by U of T researchers can significantly improve memory recall

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 01/16/2023 - 11:13

Cutline

Psychology post-doctoral researcher Bryan Hong and Professor Morgan Barense review fMRI scans in the Toronto Neuroimaging Facility (photo by Diana Tyszko)

Topic

Memory

Psychology

Research & Innovation

Researchers at the University of Toronto have demonstrated that a new smartphone application helps to significantly improve memory recall, which could prove beneficial for individuals in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of memory impairment.

Dubbed HippoCamera for its ability to mimic the function of the brain’s hippocampus in memory construction and retention, the app enhances the encoding of memories stored in the brain by boosting attention to daily events and consolidating them more distinctly – thus later enabling richer, more comprehensive recall.

In a two-step process, HippoCamera users record a short video of up to 24 seconds of a moment they want to remember with a brief eight-second audio description of the event. The app combines the two elements just as the brain’s hippocampus would, with the video component sped up to mimic aspects of hippocampal function and to facilitate efficient review. Users then replay cues produced by HippoCamera at later times on a curated and regular basis to reinforce the memory and enable detailed recall.

“We found that memories with an associated HippoCamera cue were long-lasting, and that it worked for everyone in the study – healthy older adults, those starting to show cognitive decline and even one case with severe amnesia due to an acquired brain injury,” said study co-author Morgan Barense, a professor in the department of psychology in U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science and Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience.

Morgan Barense

“Many months after the initial part of the study ended, and participants had not watched their HippoCamera cues, they were able to recall these memories in rich detail.”

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that regular users of the app were able to recall over 50 per cent more details about everyday experiences that took place as many as six months earlier than if they had only recorded events and never replayed them. The new research suggests that systematic reactivation of memories for recent real-world experiences can help to maintain a bridge between the present and past in older adults and holds promise for people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of memory impairment.

The study also found that reviewing memory cues with HippoCamera resulted in more positive sentiment during later retrieval.

“There’s something about being better able to remember these events that made people feel closer to them and more positive,” said Barense, who is leading the development of the app and is adjunct scientist at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest. “This is a really important finding given what we know about dementia and the fact that positive reminiscence or focusing on positive life events and positive emotions can improve both memory and well-being in dementia.”

The researchers measured study participants’ patterns of brain activity using fMRI, showing that recall-related brain activity in the hippocampus was more distinctive due to HippoCamera use (photo by Diana Tyszko)

For the study, participants recorded unique HippoCamera clips for everyday events that they wanted to remember and subsequently replayed these memory cues approximately eight times over a two-week period in one experiment, and over a 10-week period in a second experiment. The researchers then initiated a cued recall task where they showed the participants their memory cues and asked them to describe everything they could remember about each event.

This was followed by fMRI brain scanning sessions where researchers measured patterns of brain activity while participants saw their cues and completed a memory test. Three months later, after not practising their HippoCamera memories and not having access to the cues, the participants were asked to recall these events a second time.

“On average, we saw on later recall an increase of more than 50 per cent in the amount of rich, detailed information that someone was able to remember about events that happened as many as 200 days ago, which is significant,” said Chris Martin, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at Florida State University and lead author of the study. “Memory is truly self-sustaining ⁠– a strong memory cue can bring along another memory, which can feed into another. You just have to focus on the cue in the first place.”

Bryan Hong replays a memory cue captured using HippoCamera, which combines short audio and video clips of an event just as the hippocampus would (photo by Diana Tyszko)

The brain scans showed that replaying HippoCamera memory cues changed the way in which these everyday experiences were coded in the hippocampus, which has a well-established role in storing detailed memories for recent experiences. Recall-related activity in the hippocampus was more distinctive, meaning that HippoCamera replay helps to ensure that memories for different events remain separate from one another in the brain.

“The more detailed recollection seen earlier in the study was associated with more differentiated memory signals in the hippocampus,” said Martin. “That HippoCamera is aiding the hippocampus in distinctly encoding memories, so they do not become confused with one another, explains why users are able to recall past events in such great detail. It’s evidence that rich and detailed memory reactivation promotes memory differentiation at the neural level, and that this allows us to mentally re-experience the past with vivid detail.”

One key factor in HippoCamera’s effectiveness, the researchers say, is the sense of purpose and intention inherent in its use. By its very design, the intervention prompts users to think about what it is that they want to remember and why a particular moment is important to them – and then regularly re-engage with the memories in a meaningful way.

With an easy-to-use interface, HippoCamera is a personalized way to boost recall of daily experiences and enhance activity in the hippocampus, a part of the brain that plays a key role in memory (photo courtesy of Dynamic Memory Solutions Inc.)

“Someone who is committed to using HippoCamera is going to go through their lives paying attention to what is happening to them, asking themselves if this is an event they want to capture,” said Barense. “If it is, they’re going to take the time to stop and describe that event. And that act of approaching events in our lives with more attention is going to be good for memory.

“Then later, there’s an intention with how we study those memories, taking the time to review them using optimal learning techniques.”

The researchers note that as people begin to lose their existing memories at any point in their lives, as well as their ability to create new ones, they start to lose their sense of self. As a result, they often become disengaged from the people and events in their lives.

“Memory and our sense of identity are very closely linked,” said Barense, who is receiving support from U of T startup accelerator UTEST to take the app from lab to market. “We understand who we are as people by remembering the things that we’ve done. Our hope with HippoCamera is that by helping people feel closer to these people and events in their lives, we can help give them back their sense of self.”

The research was supported by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, among others.

Toronto hosts Collision tech conference amid growing global acclaim for U of T startups

rahul.kalvapalle — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 18:12:38 +0000

Toronto hosts Collision tech conference amid growing global acclaim for U of T startups

rahul.kalvapalle Mon, 06/20/2022 - 14:12

Cutline

More than 35,000 are expected to attend the Collision tech conference in Toronto, which is being held in-person for the first time since 2019 and will include a sizeable U of T presence (photo by David Lee)

Topic

Creative Destruction Lab

Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Rotman School of Management

A biomedical firm whose drug discovery platform is used by 16 of top 20 pharmaceutical companies. A quantum computing startup whose machine recently outperformed the world’s most powerful supercomputers. A genomics company whose cloud-based software enabled better data-sharing and analysis during the pandemic – and earned plaudits from the World Economic Forum.

BenchSci, Xanadu Quantum Technologies and DNAstack are just three local tech companies that have helped solidify the University of Toronto’s reputation as Canada’s top engine for research-based startups while contributing to a tech boom that has attracted talent and investment to the Toronto region.

The spotlight on Toronto’s tech scene will shine especially brightly this week as the city hosts Collision, North America’s fastest-growing tech conference. More than 35,000 attendees – including startup founders, business leaders, investors, scientists, journalists and celebrities – are expected to participate in the in-person gathering, which was held virtually for the past two years due to COVID-19. That’s up 40 per cent from the last time the event was held in-person in Toronto.

“There is more than two years of pent-up energy for Collision, and we are seeing strong interest across the entire U of T community as well as international delegations that are keen to re-engage with our city and our university in person,” says Jon French, director of U of T Entrepreneurship.

“Our innovation ecosystem continues to enjoy incredible growth, and Collision is an excellent opportunity to shine a light on this momentum and the impact our entrepreneurial ecosystem is having globally.”

Several U of T founders are scheduled to speak at the conference. They include Liran Belenzon, CEO of BenchSci, which Belenzon and three U of T alumni co-founded in 2015 with support from U of T’s Entrepreneurship Hatchery, Health Innovation Hub (H2i) and the Creative Destruction Lab at Rotman.

The topic of his presentation? The importance of culture in hyper-growth startups – a subject Belenzon knows intimately. BenchSci raised $123 million in funding from a who’s who of investors and expanded its team from 50 to 285 in the last three years (with plans to keep growing).

“When you navigate a completely white space with no blueprint, and you’re doing something that no one has ever done in the past, culture is crucial,” says Belenzon, who earned an MBA from U of T’s Rotman School of Management.

He adds that BenchSci sought to nail down its culture early on by integrating it into every aspect of its operations – a task that is now being bolstered by Jessica Neal, former chief of talent at Netflix who recently joined BenchSci’s advisory board.

The company even has a 55-page “culture deck” that lays out its values, rules of engagement and leadership manifesto. It includes innovative ideas such as paying a recent hire an extra month’s salary if they quit within the first three months – a policy aimed at ensuring that employees who stay on feel that the job is right for them.

“Culture is how we do things around here,” says Belenzon. “For us, success is not only what we accomplish but how we accomplish it – how you do things, how you communicate, how you make decisions, how you treat each other and how you move forward together.”

Liran Belenzon, CEO of BenchSci, plans to talk about importance of culture at hyper-growth startups like the one he co-founded in 2015 with three other U of T alumni (photo courtesy of BenchSci)

Belenzon will be joined at the conference by other founders with strong U of T links. Christian Weedbrook, CEO of Xanadu, will talk about emerging applications of quantum computing, while Nick Frosst, chief technology officer of AI language processing startup Cohere, will discuss how to take action in times of chaos and uncertainty. Toronto Mayor John Tory and celebrated author Margaret Atwood, both U of T alumni, are also scheduled to speak (see U of T's schedule at Collision 2022 here).

This year’s in-person conference will also feature a large U of T booth that will feature representatives of several campus-linked accelerators and entrepreneurship groups, including the Creative Destruction Lab, UTEST (U of T Early-Stage Technology) incubator, H2i and the Black Founders Network. Other U of T bodies that plan to have a presence at Collision include: U of T’s Innovations and Partnerships Office, Climate Positive Energy institutional strategic initiative (ISI) and the Faculty of Arts & Science.

U of T Entrepreneurship, meanwhile, plans to host presentations in the ONRamp co-working and event space, and will offer tours of the St. George campus in a bid to familiarize Collision attendees with U of T’s thriving entrepreneurship ecosystem, which has spawned over 600 companies, created more than 9,000 jobs and generated more than $2 billion in investment over the past decade.

The return of the Collision conference to Toronto as an in-person event comes at a time when U of T startups and their founders are garnering acclaim around the world.

In April, the Silicon Valley-based C100 network for Canadian tech entrepreneurs named the 20 startup founders admitted to its annual C100 Fellows program – 40 per cent of whom are either U of T alumni or lead startups that graduated from the Creative Destruction Lab. They include several women: New College alumna Christina Cai, chief operations officer of AI health insurance tech firm Lydia.ai; U of T Scarborough alumna Kathleen Chan, CEO of fashion supply chain platform Calico; and Faculty of Law graduate Laura Zizzo, CEO of climate intelligence platform Manifest Climate.

And, last month, DNAstack, a startup that develops software and standards to help scientists and health leaders access and analyze genomics data, was named one of the World Economic Forum’s 100 Technology Pioneers of 2022 for its work in establishing federated data networks and powering insights in COVID-19 pandemic surveillance, neuroscience, rare disease and oncology.

Marc Fiume, DNAstack’s co-founder and CEO, says he hopes to leverage the recognition to promote promotion of equitable data sharing through Viral AI, its federated network for genomic variant surveillance and infectious disease research.

“Viral AI can help by setting up a real-time data sharing network so that as soon as a new variant of concern is identified, for example, we get alerted,” said Fiume, who earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in computer science at U of T. “So, what we’re doing with the World Economic Forum and other partners is finding a way to get this in the hands of as many countries as possible so that we can support them in setting up genomic surveillance infrastructure.

“We’re excited about the opportunity to bring made-in-Canada technology to the global stage, and to really have an active role in shaping the future of how genetics and precision medicine pan out for really important global issues.”

The company is also a member of CanDETECT, a project that aims to use AI to develop precision oncology software. Other members include University Health Network (UHN) and Microsoft.

Fiume describes DNAstack’s role in CanDETECT as “the data integrator” since it works to examine how genomics interfaces with other data and leverages AI to learn which individuals, on a genetic basis, would respond best to therapies.

“So, it’s sort of the same approach we’re applying to COVID, but in the context of cancer,” Fiume says.

Fiume says DNAstack’s growing contributions on the national and international stage wouldn’t have been possible without the resources, supports and expertise on offer at U of T and in Toronto more generally.

“This is a very collaborative field,” he says. “If you’re not working with a policy adviser, a cloud provider, a pharma company, an AI expert and a genome scientist, you don’t have all the ingredients you need.

“That’s what’s been really great about Toronto’s ecosystem. A lot of other startups and collaborators are growing with us, and that network effect has been really powerful for us to forge. The network of the ecosystem around U of T and Toronto has been a real catalyst for our growth.”

'We took it to the real world and it worked': Rapid Zika testing platform clears hurdle with Brazil trial

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 16:01:44 +0000

'We took it to the real world and it worked': Rapid Zika testing platform clears hurdle with Brazil trial

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 03/16/2022 - 12:01

Cutline

U of T experts have led one of the first field trials for a synthetic biology-based diagnostic platform that could provide rapid, low-cost patient testing for Zika and other infectious diseases (photo courtesy of Livia Guo, LSK Technologies)

Topic

Brazil

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Research & Innovation

An international team of researchers, led by experts from the University of Toronto’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, has conducted one of the first field trials for a synthetic biology-based diagnostic platform that could provide rapid, de-centralized and low-cost patient testing for infectious diseases such as the Zika virus.

The work, conducted on-site in Latin America, revealed the potential for the cell-free synthetic biology tools and companion hardware. Published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the study’s results show that the novel diagnostic platform has analytical specificity and sensitivity equivalent to a U.S. Centres for Disease Control (CDC) PCR test for Zika and a diagnostic accuracy of 98.5 per cent with 268 patient samples collected in Recife, Brazil.

The platform is also programmable and can be similarly applied to detect any pathogen sequence. In addition to validating highly accurate diagnostic results for Zika, the team also achieved similar diagnostic performance for chikungunya virus, another mosquito-borne arbovirus.

“We see emerging diagnostics, like the paper-based tests we’ve developed, as having tremendous near-term potential to augment existing PCR capacity, improve equity in access to health care and aid in the responses to public health crises,” said Keith Pardee, assistant professor in the department of pharmaceutical sciences in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy.

The portable diagnostic platform is a combination of a cell-free, paper-based test and a field-ready companion device that allows data to be collected using image-based colour analysis – purple for positive and yellow for negative. Called “PLUM” (Portable, Low-cost, User-friendly, Multimode), the toaster-size reader presents results from up to 384 samples and displays them in a single image capture.

Prior to the current global COVID-19 pandemic, the 2015-2016 outbreak of Zika virus in Latin America emphasized the urgent need for rapid and low-cost testing that can be deployed beyond the reach of centralized diagnostic labs, according to Pardee, a Canada Research Chair in Synthetic Biology and Human Health.

“We were investigating and developing this technology well before the COVID-19 pandemic brought these issues to light at the global level,” he said. “We’ve now been able to apply it and validate it in a region of endemic disease, which is really promising because these tools are meant to enable health systems to better respond to future outbreaks of infectious disease, particularly in low-resource settings.”

From left: Margot Karlikow, Seray Çiçek, Livia Guo and Keith Pardee (photo courtesy of Livia Guo, LSK Technologies)

Lindomar Pena, of the department of virology at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) in Rio de Janeiro, led the Brazilian team that collaborated on the project.

“This robust diagnostic platform displayed desirable features to be used in developing countries such as Brazil and in laboratories with basic infrastructure,” Pena said. “We hope it can be further developed and deployed in the Brazilian network of public health laboratories to diagnose Zika patients, trace contacts and identify hot-spot areas with active community transmission.”

The hardware and software that make up PLUM were originally developed by co-authors Livia Guo and Seray Çiçek as part of their graduate work in the Pardee lab. To keep production costs low, Guo and Çiçek – who are co-founders of LSK Technologies, a startup that aims to commercialize PLUM – used customizable software programs and off-the shelf electronics, enabling the device to be built for approximately US$500 per unit.

On the molecular side, the cell-free tests can be freeze-dried, allowing for distribution without refrigeration and, significantly, all of the molecular components of the test are independent of the PCR-supply chain.

“Here we have demonstrated that these two technologies combined create a low-cost, highly accurate diagnostic tool,” said study lead author Margot Karlikow, a post-doctoral researcher in the Pardee lab from 2016 to 2021 and now co-founder of En Carta Diagnostics.

“We also demonstrated that it is feasible to transport the platform across a significant distance and implement it effectively in another country. In many low- and middle-income countries, there is no PCR testing available outside of main cities, so the ultimate goal is that this platform be used as a high-quality alternative to PCR in more regional settings.”

As part of their publication, the team shared a roadmap of how they were able to transport the diagnostic technology from Canada to Latin America so that other teams might benefit from their experiences.

Guo, Çiçek and Karlikow successfully moved their work with the Pardee lab to establish health tech startups, LSK Technologies and En Carta Diagnostics, respectively. The entrepreneurship and incubator community at U of T was instrumental in the process.

In particular, Guo and Çiçek collaborated closely with the H2i and UTEST incubators.

“Both H2i and UTEST were great in terms of making introductions and helping to expand our network,” said Çiçek, explaining that H2i helped the team figure out a road map from the regulatory and product design standpoint while UTEST helped with customer discovery so they could better understand and mitigate customer pain points.

“The entrepreneurship community at U of T helps foster regular and valuable discussions between entrepreneurs around their challenges,” said Karlikow who is now running En Carta Diagnostics from Paris. “With so much support available, it helps you to make the decision to start your company to push your vision and product forward.”

Showing that the platform could be transported and accurately detect Zika virus in patient samples is a significant step forward in creating more accessible and de-centralized testing, says Pardee.

However, the extraction of RNA from patient samples still requires liquid handling by skilled technicians at this stage. “With performance on patient samples now validated, we are tackling these next challenges, like sample preparation, so that the platform and PCR-like diagnostic capacity can be distributed more broadly into the communities where they are needed.”

The team is hoping the successful field-based patient trial will move the work forward with added momentum.

“This step of translating the technology from the lab and applying it in a real-world setting was so important,” said Karlikow. “This was more than just the science involved – we made it applicable. We took it to the real world and it worked.”

U of T Entrepreneurship Week 2022: 10 startups to watch

rahul.kalvapalle — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 19:42:37 +0000

U of T Entrepreneurship Week 2022: 10 startups to watch

rahul.kalvapalle Mon, 03/07/2022 - 14:42

Mariam Matti

Topic

Entrepreneurship Week

Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab

Artificial Intelligence

Computer Science

Creative Destruction Lab

Entrepreneneurship

Entrepreneurship Hatchery

Hospital for Sick Children

Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Clockwise from top left: Carolina Gorodetsky, Olugbenga Olubanjo, Helen Kontozopoulos, Katheron Intson, Liran Belenzon, Mina Mitry, Jeffrey Fasegha, Sarah Watling, Javier Romualdez and Aidan Gomez.

The University of Toronto is hub for startup activity – with more than 10 campus-linked accelerators and a community of entrepreneurs that has spawned over 600 companies and raised in excess of $2 billion over the past decade.

From AI-fueled drug discovery to low-cost space exploration and apps that connect Black hairstylists and barbers with clients, U of T founders are finding solutions to a wide array of challenges while creating jobs and strengthening the economy.

While some high-profile U of T startups are connected to faculty members – examples include Brendan Frey’s Deep Genomics, which uses machine learning to develop treatments for genetic diseases, and Waabi, a self-driving technology startup founded by machine learning expert Raquel Urtasun – many more are launched by students, recent grads and other members of the U of T Entrepreneurship community.

With U of T’s virtual Entrepreneurship Week kicking off today, here are 10 exciting U of T startups to keep an eye on in 2022:

Cohere AI

Aidan Gomez

With human-machine interactions becoming increasingly common in modern society, Cohere is using AI-powered natural language processing to make it easier for people to talk to machines and vice versa.

The company, whose CEO Aidan Gomez is a protégé of deep learning pioneer and University Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Hinton, has created a software platform that helps companies infuse natural language processing capabilities into their business offerings using tools like chatbots.

The company recently raised US$125-million in funding and is preparing to open an office in Silicon Valley.

“For the first time, we've brought to market an effective NLP solution that is practical, accessible, and safe,” Gomez said in a statement. “With the opening of our new Palo Alto office, we're continuing to scale in all directions, bringing aboard new talent and rapidly increasing our compute capacity to train our next generation large language models (LLMs).”

JALI Research

Sarah Watling

JALI Research also operates at the intersection of AI and language, but in a very different space: video games. The company’s hyper-realistic facial animation technology is a standout feature of one of the world’s best-selling video games in recent years: the dystopian action role-playing game Cyberpunk 2077.

Growing out of research in the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science and supported by the UTEST accelerator, JALI draws from AI and linguistics to develop tools that accurately map phenomes – the smallest isolatable elements of sound – to visemes, the corresponding mouth shapes we see on a person’s face as they make those sounds. This allows video game characters in Cyberpunk 2077 to look and sound hyper-realistic across different languages.

What’s more, JALI Research’s tools can be scaled up at a relatively low cost, making them financially viable even for smaller gaming studios.

CEO Sarah Watling credited U of T’s UTEST program with helping the company commercialize its research.

“The UTEST program is a great hybrid of courses – some of them through MaRS and others through partnerships with various mentors who support businesses in the startup life cycle, including IP law firms,” Watling told U of T News. “You get to work closely with the leadership of UTEST on various aspects, whether it’s thinking through your problem space or value proposition, or improving your pitch.”

Varient

Katheron Intson

The Varient team has built an online platform that can collect and aggregate de-identified data on treatment for people living with rare genetic diseases.

While the app has not yet launched, Varient was one of five winning teams at the U of T Entrepreneurship Hatchery’s pitch competition last year.

Founder Katheron Intson, who is completing her PhD in pharmacology and toxicology at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, told U of T News that the pitch competition provided a valuable bridge between technology and business.

“I’ve been a scientist for my entire professional life, and the rest of my team are software developers,” she says. “The business aspect of starting a company was a real blind spot to us. The Hatchery provided us with guidelines that helped us redefine where we focused our energy and effort.”

ParkinSense

Carolina Gorodetsky

ParkinSense is another U of T startup that won in last year’s Hatchery competition.

Carolina Gorodetsky, a master’s student in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and pediatric neurologist and movement disorder specialist at the Hospital for Sick Children, and her team created a medical monitoring system that uses wearables to provide real-time data on the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

The goal is to expedite the treatment of Parkinson’s patients by enabling more effective interactions with physicians.

There’s also an app that can remind patients when it’s time to take their medication, as well as track the effectiveness of those medications over time.

Gorodetsky told U of T News that the seed funding will help with the company’s protype and volunteer testing plan. Her team includes: Akshata Puranik, a graduate from the U of T Institute for Aerospace Studies, and Christopher Lucasius, a PhD candidate in electrical and computer engineering.

Reeddi

Olugbenga Olubanjo

When Olugbenga Olubanjo was a graduate student at U of T, he regularly got on the phone to speak with family and friends in his native Nigeria – only for calls to drop due to frequent power outages back home.

So, he decided to do something about it.

With the help of the Entrepreneurship Hatchery in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, Olubanjo built up a startup, Reeddi, that’s dedicated to bringing clean and affordable electricity to energy-starved communities. Reeddi rents out portable and rechargeable batteries, powered by solar charging stations, to people in parts of the world that suffer from unreliable energy infrastructure. The batteries are rented at an affordable price, with customers incentivized to return them on time by earning credits toward future rentals.

Reeddi’s mission has garnered the company attention and numerous awards, ranging from financial support from the Lo Family Social Venture fund in 2020 to, more recently, being named one of the 15 finalists of the inaugural Earthshot Prize.

However, Olubanjo says his priority isn’t profit, but genuine social impact. “At the end of the day, it’s not only about making money. Anyone can make money, but it’s about the happiness that you give people,” he told U of T News.

Fyyne

Olugbenga Olubanjo

Fyyne, a startup that helps connect barbers and hairstylists who specialize in Black hair with potential clients, was one of the success stories of the RBC Prize for Innovation and Entrepreneurship pitch competition held during last year’s Entrepreneurship Week – taking home the people’s choice award in the early-stage startup category.

The company has since gone from strength to strength, raising pre-seed funding from Canadian and American investors in October, and launching its platform in both countries in January, as reported by BetaKit.

The brainchild of U of T alumnus and former Rhodes Scholar Jeffrey Fasegha, Fyyne streamlines the process of booking hair services through an app that takes care of the entire process from finding hair artists to making reservations and payment.

Fasegha, the company’s CEO, co-founded the company with fellow U of T classmates Olubanjo – of Reeddi fame (see above) – and Al-Ameen Ogundiran.

StarSpec Technologies Inc.

Javier Romualdez

Javier Romualdez, StarSpec’s CEO and a former PhD student at U of T, wants to break down significant barriers to accessing space. That’s why he launched a satellite and space hardware company that aims to provide researchers and developers with cheap, highly functional gear.

“StarSpec is making space accessible through the availability of standardized sub-orbital technologies – satellites, hardware and software – that can allow researchers and technology developers to get access to space or near-space without the risk, cost and long development times associated with a typical space mission,” Romualdez told U of T News in June 2021.

StarSpec is already contributing to a 2025 NASA project by providing a balloon-based suborbital research vessel that will house and control the mission’s telescope. They’ve also been contracted to take part in several other NASA missions over the next few years.

The company’s ultimate goal is to create a world where space projects are no longer limited to governments, giant corporations or billionaires.

BenchSci

Liran Belenzon

BenchSci uses AI and machine learning to help scientists speed up the process of drug development and experimental design.

The company’s initial offering was a platform that helps scientists find and purchase antibodies for their experiments, but a recent injection of $63-million in Series C funding has the company poised to expand its services as it now looks to use AI to help scientists come up with hypotheses and make key experimental decisions. Its platform is already used by tens of thousands of scientists around the world, and clients include big-name pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca, Moderna and Sanofi.

Founded in 2015, BenchSci received support from the Creative Destruction Lab at U of T's Rotman School of Management, having previously worked with the Entrepreneurship Hatchery and Health Innovation Hub (H2i).

In a 2019 interview with U of T News, CEO Liran Belenzon credited CDL in particular for giving the startup the tools “to connect business and technology and form a company around that.”

ODAIA

Helen Kontozopoulos

While BenchSci is engaged in using AI to help pharmaceutical companies create life-saving drugs, ODAIA is focused on helping the pharmaceutical sector use AI to boost their customer analytics, enrich commercial insights and drive informed sales prospecting.

Founded in 2018, ODAIA was spun out of research at U of T in collaboration with the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. The company’s software taps into existing data sources, including lab records, medical data and demographic information, and uses them to provide pharmaceutical firms with actionable insights that help them refine their sales efforts.

ODAIA was co-founded by Helen Kontozopoulos, an adjunct professor of computer science and co-founder of U of T’s DCSIL (Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab), who discussed her company’s journey at the Scaleup Showcase during the 2021 Entrepreneurship Week. ODAIA also counts several other current and former U of T researchers among its core team.

Earlier this month, the company announced that it raised $17.5-million in Series A funding.

Kepler Communications

Mina Mitry

One of a growing number of space technology companies to emerge from U of T in recent years, Kepler Communications is on a mission to build a satellite internet network in space.

Founded by alumni from U of T’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, the company has brought in nearly US$100-million in total since its founding in 2015.

Kepler has 19 satellites operating in orbit to act as a testbed for its space-focused internet service, with a goal of putting more than 200 satellites into orbit and being fully operational by 2023.

CEO Mina Mitry, who has a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from U of T, told CNBC that the company is “focused on providing communications to space stations, to other satellites, to allow them to bring their information back down to Earth in real time.”

While the satellites are bult in the company’s Toronto headquarters, Mitry told CNBC that Kepler is planning to expand internationally, including the addition of a U.S. office.

Making space commonplace: U of T startup works with NASA on low-cost exoplanet research

rahul.kalvapalle — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 17:37:57 +0000

Making space commonplace: U of T startup works with NASA on low-cost exoplanet research

rahul.kalvapalle Mon, 06/14/2021 - 13:37

Cutline

With origins in the university's Balloon Astrophysics Group, U of T startup StarSpec is providing a balloon-based suborbital research vessel that will house and control a 2025 NASA mission's telescope (image courtesy of StarSpec)

Topic

Global Lens

Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics

Space

UTIAS

A giant telescope carried on a balloon the size of a football stadium will soon allow researchers to gaze at distant gas planets known as “hot Jupiters” – and a University of Toronto startup is playing a key role in the endeavour.

Growing out of research at U of T, StarSpec is contributing to the 2025 NASA project by providing the suborbital research vessel that houses and controls the mission’s telescope, which will be deployed some 40 kilometres above the Earth’s surface after the balloon is launched from a volcanic island in Antarctica.

It’s hoped the NASA mission – one of several StarSpec is involved with – will both improve our understanding of exoplanets and put StarSpec one step closer to realizing its ultimate goal of helping small organizations, including researchers, access space by providing them with cheap, highly functional gear.

StarSpec aims to fill the “supply-chain gap” in space technology by providing gear such as its research gondolas, which are can house, support and control scientific instruments (photo courtesy of StarSpec)

“There is a growing class of people who want access to space either for astronomy, Earth-observation or satellite-based Internet, but need it faster and at a lower cost than is typically afforded by what I would call ‘the old space regime,’” says Javier Romualdez, StarSpec’s CEO and a former PhD student at U of T.

For the upcoming NASA mission, StarSpec’s balloon-borne research gondola will be equipped with high-precision telescope and image stabilization systems, enabling the U.S. space agency’s Exoplanet Climate Infrared Telescope (EXCITE) to make spectrographic measurements of planets with a high degree of accuracy – crucial for better understanding their atmospheres while shedding light on how solar systems and planets form.

The research gondola StarSpec is building for NASA’s EXCITE mission is one of many standardized-to-semi-custom suborbital research platforms that offers unparalleled pointing and scanning performance.

StarSpec, which received assistance from U of T’s UTEST entrepreneurship program, grew out of research at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, department of physics in the Faculty of Arts & Science and the U of T Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. It’s one of a growing number of space technology companies that has emerged from the university in recent years. Others include Kepler Communications, which builds, launches and operates low earth orbit satellites, and was founded by alumni from U of T’S Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, and those working with the Creative Destruction Lab, a seed-stage accelerator based at U of T’s Rotman School of Management that launched a dedicated stream for space ventures in 2018.

Yet, while launches have become less expensive and risky in recent years thanks to the growth of launch companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Romualdez says there remains a significant barrier to accessing space: supporting technology. That’s why StarSpec is focusing on solutions such as its research gondolas, which are essentially space-proof carriages fitted with the technologies to house, support and control scientific instruments.

“Let’s say you want to put a camera in space to take pictures of the Earth or build a new Google Maps. It’s not like you can just take a camera, stick it into SpaceX’s rocket and launch it into space,” Romualdez says. “It’s not going to work because you don’t have the communications, the power, the ability to point and control the camera and the ability to downlink the data.

“That’s what we’re providing. We’re basically filling the supply-chain gap in space technology.”

StarSpec’s gondolas use modularized “plug-and-play” systems with standardized hardware and software that can be used with existing launch vehicles, allowing for precise control of scientific instruments – all without exorbitant costs and lengthy development times.

From left to right: Javier Romualdez, Steven Li and John Hartley.

“The traditional approach is to try and rebuild everything from scratch every single time an experiment has to go [to space],” says John Hartley, who holds a PhD in physics from U of T and serves as StarSpec’s chief financial officer. “With our systems in place, the timeline can be cut in half, which also translates to being more cost-effective.

“That’s a major advantage. If you can get up there sooner, you get your data and results sooner, and everybody’s happy. That brings real benefits to both the academic and commercial worlds.”

StarSpec’s origins can be traced to U of T's Balloon Astrophysics Group, headed by Professor Barth Netterfield, a leading expert in balloon-borne and suborbital technology who now serves as the company’s technical adviser. Romualdez and Hartley both completed their PhDs in Netterfield’s lab, while chief technical officer Steven Li completed his master’s degree in the lab before going on to pursue a PhD at Princeton University.

Romualdez says he was interested in working with Netterfield because he wanted to carry out an end-to-end project. “This lab stuck out to me because they said, ‘OK, fine, your PhD will be designing, building, testing and launching a sub-orbital telescope – all in five years,” Romualdez says.

In 2015, only three years after Romualdez began his doctoral work, the Balloon Astrophysics Group launched the Balloon-Borne Imaging Telescope (BIT) with the Canadian Space Agency in Timmins, Ont. The next launch took place from NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Texas, with two further launches confirming the balloon-borne telescope as an instrument with imaging resolution and stability performance that rivaled NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

“BIT was basically a Steadicam with the same astronomical capabilities as the Hubble Space Telescope, but we were able to develop it in three years with a graduate research budget,” Romualdez says.

Now, StarSpec is looking to bring similar capabilities to NASA’s EXCITE project, which will measure the atmosphere content of exoplanets. “The overarching idea here is trying to answer the question: Are we alone in the universe?’” says Hartley. “We know Earth has an atmosphere and because of that, we can live on it. And there are exoplanets out there in the millions, so what do they look like? EXCITE is a step towards answering that question.”

StarSpec has also been contracted to take part in several other NASA missions, including one project with the new Pioneers program that fosters astrophysics science ventures at lower cost, using smaller hardware.

Over the next few years, the company hopes to take part in suborbital projects all over the world.

“Two years from now, I believe we will have saturated and expanded as far as we can into the ballooning and suborbital space,” says Romualdez.

What’s next for Starspec? The company is working to repurpose its suborbital technologies for satellites that can access low-Earth orbit – the layer of space roughly between 200 and 1,600 kilometres above the Earth’s surface. Among its projects is an experiment at U of T’s Dunlap Institute that will utilize a space-borne telescope.

It’s also developing a range of standardized, plug-and-play satellites.

“Five years from now, we want to have a standardized product stream for satellites,” Romualdez says, adding there’s growing interest in using space to support applications such as fintech and real-time Earth observation. “I see us having a major contribution on those fronts.”

StarSpec’s ambitious trajectory would not have been possible without the support of U of T and the UTEST program in particular, its founders say. The U of T early-stage entrepreneurship program’s contributions included connecting the company to its current legal team as well as crucial intellectual property resources.

“When we were starting, we had a lot of technical knowhow but realized very early on that, from a business perspective, we were in over our heads,” Hartley says. “UTEST was an easy and accessible platform for us to gain information on how to start and run a business; what sorts of things you need to think about; how do you position yourself in the market – things that we didn’t understand and needed to figure out.”

Adds Romualdez: “It’s been only nine months since we were part of the UTEST program, and looking back, we’ve already come so far. UTEST was a great stepping-stone to speed us on our way.”

Ultimately, StarSpec hopes to help create a world where space projects are no longer limited to governments, giant corporations or billionaires like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

“Our long-term vision is that a small business, a city or a small research group at a university that has something that could really have an impact – a revolutionary communications or astronomical device – will be able to look in a catalogue, select a system and plan a launch,” says Romualdez.

“We’re envisioning a world where accessing space is not this extremely niche concept [with all sorts of highly technical] barriers. It’s commonplace.”

U of T startup draws on AI, linguistics to power facial animation in video games

rahul.kalvapalle — Fri, 30 Apr 2021 16:53:22 +0000

U of T startup draws on AI, linguistics to power facial animation in video games

rahul.kalvapalle Fri, 04/30/2021 - 12:53

Cutline

JALI Research, which grew out of research in U of T's department of computer science, has developed a suite of tools that power hyper-realistic facial animations for video game characters (image by JALI Research)

Topic

A University of Toronto startup is spurring the success of one of the best-selling video games of the past year – the dystopian action role-playing game Cyberpunk 2077.

Growing out of research in the department of computer science, JALI Research has developed a suite of tools that power the game’s hyper-realistic facial animations, allowing characters to convincingly deliver dialogue in different languages.

Multi-language animation capacity was touted as a novel feature of Cyberpunk 2077, which sold over 13.7 million copies globally in its first month, according to game developer CD Projekt Red.

“Having brand new animation that responds to recorded dialogue from voiceover actors across 10 languages – and not just dubbing over English animation – means you’re watching animation that matches up to what you hear,” said Sarah Watling, the startup’s CEO.

“That was one of the things that CD Projekt Red believed would have a huge impact. They were going to be able to grow new retail markets by giving a localized experience to players.”

Sarah Watling

Founded in 2016, JALI Research uses AI to accurately map phonemes – the smallest elements of sound that can be isolated – to visemes, the corresponding mouth shapes that we see on a person’s face as they’re making those sounds.

Watling says JALI’s technology helps bridge the gap between actual gameplay and the more cinematic, pre-constructed scenes that are used to tell the game’s story. “The person who’s playing the game is spending most of their time in gameplay. So, the improvements we’re able to deliver improve that aspect of the game as well,” she says.

The company’s roots can be traced to research by Chief Technology Officer Pif Edwards while he was a PhD student in the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science. Edwards noticed that existing automated dialogue systems weren’t matching the nuance and complexity of human speech – so he set about developing an alternative.

Edwards was the lead author of a 2016 paper that introduced an “animator-centric viseme model for expressive lip synchronization.” The paper’s co-authors included Chris Landreth, an Academy Award-winning animator who has served as distinguished research artist-in-residence at U of T’s Dynamic Graphics Project; Eugene Fiume, professor of computer science and dean of the Faculty of Applied Sciences at Simon Fraser University, who earned his graduate and doctoral degrees at U of T; and Karan Singh, professor in U of T’s department of computer science.

The resulting software, which makes use of a facial animation rig to help map phonemes to visemes, was dubbed “JALI” – a combination of “jaw” and “lip,” the two anatomical features the paper said account for most variation in visual speech.

Watling joined the startup as CEO in 2020, the year the company announced that its software would be powering Cyberpunk 2077’s facial animations.

She says a key advantage of JALI’s technology is it enables studios to scale up facial animation at a relatively low cost. That’s in contrast to more expensive approaches such as keyframe and motion-capture animation, which are only financially viable for the biggest studios.

“Video-game worlds are becoming more and more expansive and immersive,” she says. “At the same time, gamers are pretty indiscriminate about the scale of the company. So, the expectation for greater immersion, more realism and higher production values still gets applied – regardless of whether you’re a two-person studio or a massive multinational studio.

“Our technology really provides the ability to capture ideal quality at scale so that the return on investment increases over time, enabling smaller studios to punch above their weight.”

She credits U of T’s expansive innovation ecosystem – particularly the UTEST program, which is currently taking applications for its next cohort – for helping the company take its research from lab to market.

“The UTEST program is a great hybrid of courses – some of them through MaRS and others through partnerships with various mentors who support businesses in the startup life cycle, including IP law firms,” she said. “You get to work closely with the leadership of UTEST on various aspects, whether it’s thinking through your problem space or value proposition, or improving your pitch.

“As well, the Innovations & Partnerships Office is so good at helping startups progress from that initial process of ideation and invention to a viable commercial path, navigating bureaucracy, legal obstacles and incorporation.

“We’ve found the experience has been incredibly supportive.”

U of T Entrepreneurship Week: Six startups working on COVID-19 innovations

rahul.kalvapalle — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 22:11:24 +0000

U of T Entrepreneurship Week: Six startups working on COVID-19 innovations

rahul.kalvapalle Tue, 03/09/2021 - 17:11

Cutline

U of T startup Structura Biotechnology, headed by Saara Virani and Ali Punjani, helped U.S. researchers produce an atomic scale map of the spike on SARS-CoV-2 by using the startup's AI technology (photo by Chris Sorensen)

Topic

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Coronavirus

Faculty of Information

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

University Health Network

ThisIsThePlace

U of T Scarborough