More than a third of the human brain’s energy is dedicated to visual processing. Images are our primary medium for the perception of the world and our eyes have been the only means of interpreting these images.
Today’s search engines are incapable of searches using images instead they sift through mountains of text to recognize key terms. With the advent of computer vision algorithms, faster computing and prevalence of digital cameras, visual perception using computers is now possible. These technologies propel the search market into advanced image and video based searches enabling more meaningful discovery of rich content.
Breakthroughs in the ability to recognize shapes such as faces, emotions and places from mere image pixels are becoming a reality in our modern lives. Microsoft’s XBOX Kinect is a significant first step in that direction.
The text based web search and aggregation is a multi-billion dollar industry, it is only a matter of time when the rich media search embarks on this wagon. Discover how entrepreneurs are leveraging their complex mathematical computer vision know-how into highly profitable business models that will bring about new ways to discover, organize information and bring about the next wave of advanced computing and machine learning.
Come join us at the next VLAB event as we analyze, interpret and discuss along the following questions
Will visual computing simply make it possible to process more content or will it create a new paradigm for how we search?
Who are market leaders in this space who are changing the dynamics of the vision computing?
Could the agile startups outrun the giant corporations to the next prize in computing?
What are the security concerns with collecting and interpreting personal information such as facial features? Is there a scope for careful anonymity?
MODERATOR
Ezra Roizen, Ackrell Partners
Ezra Roizen is a partner with Ackrell Capital, a boutique investment bank, where he focuses on advising emerging digital businesses on matters of M&A, financing and corporate strategy. Previously Ezra was a Vice President with Rutberg & Company, a mobile and digital media focused investment bank. Ezra has co-founded two technology companies: Montclare Technologies, Inc., an Internet consulting and development firm where he was the CEO and Convoy Corporation (now part of Sybase) where he was the Director of Business Development. Ezra has also served as the Vice President of Business and Product development for Aircraft Technical Publishers, an aviation information services provider. Ezra is frequent speaker and emcee at technology conferences and is the co-host of Vator Box a show on emerging companies on VatorNews.com. Ezra holds an M.B.A. from a combined program of Columbia University’s Columbia Business School (where he earned beta gamma sigma honors) and the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business (where he earned a Haas community service fellowship). He also holds a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of California, Davis (with Minors in English and History). Ezra is the Chair of the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Alumni Relations Council. You can see Ezra’s full LinkedIn profile here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/roizen
PRESENTER
Laurent Gil, CEO of Viewdle
As CEO of Viewdle, Laurent leads the company’s technology, marketing, business, and corporate development strategy. Prior to Viewdle, Laurent spent over five years in investment banking as a senior investment banker in corporate finance and capital markets at the French investment bank Credit Agricole. During his MBA at Wharton, Laurent helped establish a boutique investment bank in Brazil, which completed large transactions in the telecom sector in Latin America. He co-founded and served as CFO of TAHO, a wireless internet service provider in Rio de Janeiro, which raised U.S. $10M in 2001 to develop a broadband wireless internet network in Latin America. Before leaving Brazil, he co-created IdeaValley, the leading provider of electronic paper in Latin America. Most recently, Laurent spent two years in West Africa deploying wireless networks in high schools, for a non-profit organization he founded.
PANELISTS
Dr. Fei-Fei Li, Assistant Professor, Director of Vision Lab, Stanford University
Fei-Fei Li is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department, at Stanford University, where she is the Director of the Vision Lab. Her areas of interest include Computer Vision — representation, learning, and recognition of objects, scenes, and events in static images and dynamic video sequences, and Human Vision – the use of psychophysics and neurophysiology tools to understand the underlying neural mechanisms of high-level visual perception. She previously held the role of Assistant Professor at Princeton University and the University of Illionois, Urban-Champaign. Fei-Fei has received numerous awards including the Stanford Terman Fellowship, Google Research Award, and Microsoft New Research Faculty Fellowship. She received her PhD in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology, and her BA in Physics from Princeton University. Notably, Fei-Fei spent a year in 1999-2000 doing Tibetan medical research.
Eghosa Omoigui, Founder & Partner, Echo Ventures
Eghosa Omoigui is founder and managing partner of EchoVC Partners, a new San Francisco Bay-based early stage venture capital firm that focuses on making investments in innovative technology startups across the globe. Prior to this, Eghosa was with Intel for nearly 10 years and his last role was as Director, Strategic Investments, Consumer Internet & Semantic Technologies. In the latter role, he acted as a senior investment professional in the world’s largest stage-agnostic technology venture capital organization, focused on platform-agnostic web services and digital media-based investment opportunities in the consumer internet. Due to a 10+ year passion for all things semweb/semtech/data, Eghosa also drove Intel Capital’s investment focus on next generation semantic technologies and the real-time web. Representative investments include Retailigence, Stipple, SpeakerText, Inflatable Spaces, Betaworks, Sense Networks, Voxify, Yatra, BuzzInTown, Cerebra, SmartZip and TextDigger (acquired by Federated Media).
Prior to joining Intel, Omoigui worked in several start-ups in senior management positions and has variegated experience as a corporate and securities law firm lawyer, in-house counsel and turnarounds/restructuring advisor. Eghosa attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College and has been admitted to the Bar in Nigeria, New York and Oregon . Eghosa lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his 3 kids, a miniature poodle and a supersized german shepherd.
Munjal Shah, Google, Founder of Like.com
Munjal Shah is Co-founder and CEO of Riya Inc (makers of Like.com). Together with Burak Gokturk, he co-founded the company in August of 2004. Munjal is a serial entrepreneur who focuses on building companies from zero to millions in revenue. Prior to Riya he was co-founder and CEO of Andale Inc, a provider of software to eBay merchants. While he was CEO, Andale grew from 0 to double digit millions in revenue. Prior to Andale, Baan, IBM, and a startup called Blaxxun Interactive. Munjal started his career in artificial intelligence, writing software for Agouron Pharmaceuticals that predicted the efficacy of anti-HIV drugs. Like.com was acquired by Google.
BusinessWeek declared Munjal one of the Top 10 up and coming CEOs in 2001. Munjal sits on the advisor board to a number of very early stage startups including: Yousendit, Auyptima (sold to Oracle), Pubmatic, and MesmoTV. He is a charter member of TIE (The Indus Entrepreneur) in Bangalore and writes a blog sharing his experiences as an entrepreneur herehttp://munjal.typepad.com. He received his Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University and his Bachelors in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego.
Dr. Eitan Sharon, CTO and Co-Founder of VideoSurf
Dr. Eitan Sharon, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer for VideoSurf, is leading the company’s innovative computer vision and search technology. He took a leave of absence from the tenure-track Assistant Professorship he held between 2005 and 2007 at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in order to lead VideoSurf’s technology team. Dr. Sharon received his B.Sc. in mathematics from Tel-Aviv University in 1995 and his Ph.D. in computer science and applied mathematics from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2002. From 2003 to 2004 Dr. Sharon was a Visiting Research Associate at Brown University in the Division of Applied Mathematics. He then went on to hold postdoctoral fellowships at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley and University of California, Los-Angeles
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