CognoVision Solutions Inc., a company founded by Carleton University alumni, was chosen as the nation’s most innovative firm at the 2009 Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX). CIX is billed as Canada’s most important gathering of the key players in the innovation economy.
The awards ceremony was held in Toronto on Wednesday.
CognoVision, which provides real-time audience measurement and retail intelligence solutions, was co-founded by former Foundry Program intern and Carleton alumnus, Haroon Mirza, former Carleton alumnus Dr. Shahzad Malik and former student Faizal Javer.
Carleton President Roseann O’Reilly Runte congratulates all three former Carleton students. “Innovation is one of Carleton’s hallmarks. I am very proud of the achievements of our students and their mentors. They are changing the world positively.”
The founding team of CognoVision met at Carleton.”Shahzad was completing his Masters in Computer Science at the time, while Faizal and I were pursuing our business degrees,” says Mirza, director of business development for CognoVision. “I had the incredible opportunity to take part in the Foundry Program, which opened my eyes to the world of technology commercialization. The Foundry played a seminal role in teaching me how to bring together the worlds of technology and business to build practical solutions, while the business and engineering faculties provided us with an excellent academic foundation.”
Carleton would also like to congratulate You i Labs Inc. (http://www.youilabs.com/) and Overlay.TV (http://www.overlay.tv/), both co-founded by alumni from Carleton University. Both placed in the Top 20 list of innovative companies at CIX.
“The fact that three Carleton alumni-founded tech companies placed in the Top 20 is clearly a testimony to the quality of the talent that Carleton University produces,” says Luc Lalande, director of Carleton’s Foundry Program. “This backs up what Canada’s top innovation leader, Sir Terence Matthews, said in his keynote address – that Canadian grads are among the best in the world.”
More than 350 companies have been founded or co-founded by Carleton alumni, faculty and former faculty. A list of these companies is available at: http://carletoninnovation.com/foundrywiki/index.php?title=Carleton_Poster_of_Tech_Companies
CognoVision serves retailers, advertisers, digital signage networks, media planners and market research companies by helping them to measure the effectiveness of in-store marketing and understand shopper behaviour. Using small camera sensors and computers, their anonymous face detection and people tracking software gathers data on how people watch ads and how they move within a store. The technology can determine how many people looked at advertising, how long they looked for, their gender, how they move within a store and can also adapt advertising to cater to viewers in real-time. This information can be used to dramatically improve the effectiveness of ad campaigns, increase product sales and advertising revenue, optimize retail execution and reduce operational costs. CognoVision’s solutions have been designed to completely respect privacy. The company says that no images or video are ever recorded, and no personally identifiable information is ever stored. http://www.cognovision.com
The Canadian Innovation Exchange provides a showcase for the country’s most compelling new technology inventions and a platform for partnerships and transactional relationships with counterparties from Canada, the United States and elsewhere. CIX plays the role of providing critical insight through its sessions and networking events designed to enable investors to discover each other as well as Canada’s next great companies. CIX culminates in the presentation of Canada’s Top 20 Innovative Companies. CIX participants voted live to choose the CIX 09 “Canadian Innovation Leader.” http://www.canadianinnovationexchange.com/
The Foundry Program is Carleton University’s flagship innovation support program that helps to stimulate an innovative and entrepreneurial culture at Carleton by encouraging faculty, students, and staff to act on their ideas. The Foundry “model” is widely acknowledged as having influenced provincial policy regarding new university talent and knowledge and ideas that can best be harnessed to create social and economic value for Ontario. The Foundry Office assists the Carleton community to further develop ideas and innovations with potential to make the world a better place. http://carletoninnovation.com/foundry/
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For more information:
Lin Moody
Media Relations
Carleton University
613-520-2600, ext. 8705
Thursday, December 3, 2009 in News Releases
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