Elizabeth Monier-Williams

Professor (and TED speaker) Kang Lee: his new startup will change how we detect emotion

sgupta — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 09:57:40 +0000

Professor (and TED speaker) Kang Lee: his new startup will change how we detect emotion sgupta Thu, 02/18/2016 - 04:57

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“I truly believe this company will usher in a new era in man-machine interaction,” says Pozzuoli, now CEO of NuraLogix. “In the very near future, our technology will enable machines to understand how humans are feeling more accurately than any human being can today.”

MaRS Innovation and U of T staff also helped Lee to secure a $115,000 NSERC I2I grant to hire a developer and adapt his existing lab configuration for the technology – which was bulky and required an expensive camera, outside lighting and headset – to a more user-friendly laptop version. Doing so has increased the technology’s processing speed 90 per cent and reduced the time required for data analysis by a factor of three.

NuraLogix has also completed two pilot studies in the food and beverages industry with an Ontario-based company that revealed complementary EQ intelligence to the traditional pen and paper questionnaire. In particular, the studies found inconsistencies in subject feedback and expressed opinions about such qualities as after tastes as compared to the data captured by Lee’s technology.

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Look what happens when researchers from one of the world's top ten computer science departments launch a startup

sgupta — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 11:29:16 +0000

Look what happens when researchers from one of the world's top ten computer science departments launch a startup sgupta Mon, 01/26/2015 - 06:29

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Professor Craig Boutilier and Tyler Lu

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MaRS Innovation and the University of Toronto have announced that the founders of Granata Decision Systems Inc., a graduate of the University of Toronto Early-Stage Technology (UTEST) start-up incubator program, have joined Google Inc.

Craig Boutilier, a professor in U of T’s department of computer science, and Tyler Lu, a graduating PhD student in the same department, co-founded Granata Decision Systems in 2012 to develop their advanced decision-support technologies.(Read more about computer science at U of T and how it ranks among the world's top ten computer science departments.)

Granata’s software platform provided what are known as real-time optimization and scenario analysis capabilities for large-scale, data-driven marketing problems and group/organizational decision-making.

“The emerging spirit of entrepreneurship in the department is reflected by the many startup companies established by our faculty and students and rooted in our world-class research programs,” said Professor Sven Dickinson, chair of the computer science department. “Our strength in artificial intelligence is not only behind successful new startups, like Craig and Tyler’s, as well as Geoff Hinton's, but behind exciting new entrepreneurship initiatives like the Watson Challenge.”

(Read about how Google acquired a U of T neural networks company last year.) (Read about the U of T team taking second place in the IBM Watson challenge).

The company was part of the UTEST program’s first cohort. UTEST is part of U of T’s growing ecosystem of incubators and commercialization support services, and was named one of Canada’s top seven accelerators in 2013.

“This is a significant milestone for the UTEST program and the wider MaRS Innovation portfolio,” said Raphael Hofstein, president and CEO of MaRS Innovation. “We co-created the UTEST program with U of T to foster entrepreneurship in a meaningful way while encouraging students and professors to translate their academic ideas into commercial realities.

“We hope Craig and Tyler’s success will motivate other researchers and students to consider working with MI and participate in UTEST and our other commercialization programs.”

Jointly administered by MaRS Innovation and U of T, UTEST’s mission is to support early-stage startups in computer science. Through UTEST, aspiring entrepreneurs launch a company, develop a business strategy, meet with industry representatives to get feedback on their products, secure seed funding and opportunities for follow-on investment, receive mentorship and have use of office space in the MaRS Discovery District for a year.

“Craig and Tyler’s success is an excellent example of what can be achieved when innovative ideas are transformed into reality by the kind of support UTEST provides during critical early stages of development,” said Professor Peter Lewis, interim vice-president of research and innovation at U of T. “We're thrilled to see them take their next steps with Google.”

Unlike other start-up incubators, UTEST accepts companies in the very earliest stages of idea generation – before they’re ready for traditional incubators – and can be a springboard to other North American accelerator ecosystems, such as YCombinator, Creative Destruction and One Eleven. (Read more about startups and entrepreneurship at U of T.)

Watch a video from CBC's Lang & O'Leary report (below) featuring Professor Boutilier and Granata.

Elizabeth Monier-Williams is a writer with MaRS Innovation, a partner of the University of Toronto.

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U of T spinoff company launches tiny, smarter keyboard

sgupta — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 14:55:00 +0000

U of T spinoff company launches tiny, smarter keyboard sgupta Tue, 03/19/2013 - 10:55

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This one-dimensional, tiny keyboard frees up mobile screen space while allowing fast, accurate typing (image courtesy of Whirlscape)

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For users of mobile, touchscreen devices it's an appealing idea: what if you could make a smarter, more accurate keyboard yet gain more space on your touchscreen?

Meet Minuum, “the little keyboard for big fingers" from Whirlscape Inc., a tech start-up from Associate Professor Khai Truong of the University of Toronto's Department of Computer Science and alumnus Will Walmsley of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

Within hours of its launch March 18, 2013, Minuum’s crowdfunding campaign was covered by TechCrunch, CBC News, TechCrunch Japan, Toronto Standard and Mobile Syrup. Whirlscape had aimed to raise $10,000 on Indiegogo by April 17, 2013 - but the company had already raised more than twice that amount within the first day.

A tiny, one-dimensional keyboard that frees up mobile screen space while allowing fast, accurate typing, Minuum uses a specialized, patent-protected auto-correction algorithm that corrects highly imprecise typing.This algorithm, based on the touchscreen and wearable device research of founders Truong and Walmsley, configures the difference between what you type and what you mean, in real time – getting it right even if you miss every single letter.

“While our mobile devices are becoming smarter and faster, the keyboard has coasted into the 21st century essentially unchanged from the days of the typewriter; now we’re stuck with keyboards that cover up half a smartphone screen but don’t make up in accuracy what they take up in screen space,” says Walmsley, CEO of Whirlscape. “Realizing we could minimize the keyboard while maintaining accuracy was the eureka moment. We’ve changed what a keyboard needs to be, enabling a future of typing with wearable technology.”

Minuum improves mobile typing by:

•Recovering more than half of the usable touchscreen space lost when typing on traditional virtual keyboards
•Allowing for fast, accurate text entry when typing is sloppy
•Providing letter magnification for precise typing—especially useful for large fingers
•Respecting user familiarity with the existing QWERTY keyboard
•Providing convenient access to everything users expect in a keyboard (such as punctuation, space, backspace, and enter) without stealing screen space
•Letting you type anywhere—with a keyboard you can move around your touchscreen.

The Minuum touchscreen keyboard is the first step of the Minuum project, which seeks to bring simplified typing to mobile and wearable devices. The Minuum layout is “one-dimensional” because it presents a continuum of letters, laid out in a row. Its product offerings address typing errors in widespread applications like e-mail and text messaging (SMS), initially through alternative keyboards on Android devices but the company plans to offer it for iOS (iPhone, iPad) and other platforms or OEM devices.

The simplicity, size, and accuracy of Minuum make it the perfect keyboard to fit into the future of wearable computing, said Walmsley. The campaign will fund the launch of an Android keyboard app, along with an iOS (iPhone, iPad) keyboard for developers to put into their apps. But although the first implementation of this technology is for smartphones and tablets, its type-anywhere implications are far-reaching, he added.

The Minuum keyboard’s beta version will be available for technology journalists to test for free in June 2013. (Read more information and product specifications here.) Founded in June 2012, Whirlscape has received seed funding from the University of Toronto Early Stage Technology, or UTEST program and MaRS Innovation. Whirlscape is engaged in developing fully functional Minuum keyboards for Android, incorporating touchscreen entry and motion-controlled modes. The company is also prototyping wearable typing devices to test its technology to its limits.

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Helping doctors perform better ear examinations

sgupta — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 09:37:21 +0000

Helping doctors perform better ear examinations sgupta Thu, 02/28/2013 - 04:37

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A U of T medical student examines normal and pathological ear conditions (all photos and video courtesy of Oto-Sim)

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From the perspective of a patient, an otoscopy is an almost iconic moment during a visit to a family doctor. The physician takes a small instrument vaguely resembling a hammer and peers through it into first one ear, then another.

But what about the doctor's perpective?

Experts say acquiring the skills to perform an otoscopy properly is difficult - and it's time to change the way medical students are trained. Recently, University of Toronto medical students had the chance to participate in an intensive, one-hour otoscopy workshop using the OtoSim™ — a training and simulation system that is radically changing the way students in Canada and around the world learn this poorly-acquired medical skill.

“It was really helpful,” said Vishaal Gupta, a second-year medical student. “I’ve looked in ears before and you never know what you’re actually looking at; it’s good that they can circle what they’re talking about. The clarity is a big thing because I could actually pinpoint all the little tiny differences. I think it should be used earlier on in training.”

Dr. Vito Forte and Dr. Paolo Campisi invented the OtoSim™ after perceiving a systemic need among the students and medical professionals they taught for better otoscopic training tools. Forte is a professor in U of T’s Department of Otolaryngology; Campisi is an associate professor and director of Postgraduate Education.

Working with a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians, educators, and engineers, they created the OtoSim™ device and its accompanying software to help medical professionals more accurately diagnose ear pathologies.

OtoSim™ training units can be networked in sets of six, allowing instructors to share images with a group of students. For the U of T event, 48 OtoSim™ units were networked via eight instruction hubs, allowing Assistant Professor and Director of Undergraduate Education Dr. Albino Chiodo, along with Lecturer and Co-director Dr. John Lee, both in the Faculty of Medicine’s Department of Otolaryngology, to teach in two one-hour sessions.

“Historically, otoscopy simulation involved looking at an image of an eardrum on a piece of film at the end of a rubber ear,” said Dr. Andrew Sinclair, CEO of OtoSim Inc. “OtoSim™ has a digital image bank that is orders of magnitude more extensive. The instructor can electronically point to areas within the image and confirm that the student sees the pathology of interest. Diagnostic accuracy goes up enormously.”

Organized in part by medical students Lucas Djelic and Joel Davies through Facebook, this event was the largest mass medical simulation exercise ever held for U of T students.

It was part of Triple MD: Mechanisms, Manifestations and Management of Disease, a 36-week course that runs throughout the second year of medical school.

“I love that they’ve got both common, uncommon, and even some quite rare pathology in the OtoSim™ image bank,” said Dr. Ian Witterick, professor and chair of the Department of Otolaryngology. “I’m sure that in future years some of the students going through this program will say, ‘aha,’ I recognize that because I saw it using the OtoSim™.”

OtoSim Inc.’s technology was brought to market with seed-funding support and services from MaRS Innovation to facilitate the OtoSim’s™ business and product development. Headquartered in the MaRS Discovery District, the company has also received seed-funding and R&D support from the Hospital for Sick Children, The Health Technology Exchange (HTX), Ontario Centres of Excellence, National Research Council Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program, MaRS Discovery District’s Business Acceleration Program, and the SickKids Women’s Auxiliary.

Its clients include hospitals, universities and medical schools around the world.

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