TORONTO, CANADA, 11/2/2018 — MannLab students have founded companies now worth more than $1 billion. Professor Steve Mann teaches a course entitled "Inventrepreneurship" (Invention + entrepreneurship) and teaches students fundamental scientific principles that lead to innovative breakthroughs. Examples of success from Mann's students include:
Ryan Janzen
While he was Mann's PhD student, Ryan Janzen, pictured below,founded a transportation company, Transpod, which raised $65,000,000 ($20,000,000 investment [Betakit 2016] plus 32,000,000 Euro grant) [Transpod 2018]. Janzen recently won the "Innovation of the Year Award".
Caption: R. Janzen receiving Innovation of the Year Award, 2018.
James Fung and Chris Aimone
Mann's MaSc students James Fung (now with Google) and Chris Aimone, together with Mann, and others, co-founded InteraXon and raised $28,800,000. The InteraXon Muse product is now sold in Best Buy stores all across North America and is also available on Amazon.com. Interaxon's first product, the Muse, was described as "The Most Important Wearable of 2014" [Venturebeat, Gregory Ferenstein, May 24, 2014 12:39pm], "The King of Wearables" (BetaKit Canadian Startup News, Feature May 27, 2014). and #1 in the "Top six wearables..." of 2015. Regarding the new Muse 2 headband and brain health technology platform that was just released on 2018 October 30th, Mashable described it as "the holy grail for mindfulness", in an article entitled: "Muse 2 review: The world's best meditation tech just got even better"(Mashable).
Muse2 Launch day at InteraXon, 2018 October 30th.
Raymond Lo
While he was Mann's PhD student, Raymond Lo (now at Harvard University), together with Mann, and others, founded Metavision, raised $75,000,000, and manufactured the world's first extramissive spatial imaging augmented reality glass (Can. Pat. 2,896,985, US Pat. 9,720,505).
Raymond Lo and Steve Mann with Metavision eyeglasses.
Mir Adnan Ali
While transitioning from MaSc. to PhD under Mann's supervision, Mir Adnan Ali founded a blockchain company and raised $31,000,000 by ICO (Initial Coin Offering). Ali and Mann invented the concept of blockchain-sousveillance. Sousveillance is the "Little Data" ("Little Watching") counterpart to the otherwise one-sided "Big Data" ("Big Watching") of surveillance. See "FreeGlass...", Mann, Ali, Lo, and Wo, in IEEE i-Society.
SHENZHEN, CHINA - 12/8/2017 -- MannLab is recognized by the City of Shenzhen as one of the top ten companies in the city for 2018, along with leading global companies including ARM Holdings (www.arm.com), a British multinational semiconductor and software design company, and WeWork (www.wework.com), an American multinational which provides shared workspaces across the globe.
SHENZHEN, CHINA - 12/5/2017 -- Professor Steve Mann, Founder and Chairman of MannLab (www.mannlab.com) widely known as the “Father of Wearable Computing” and Kathleen Wynne, Premier of Ontario, Canada, visited Shenzhen on Nov 30th, leading a business delegation comprised of more than 100 Canadian and Chinese government officials. Professor Mann is interested in further examining the research environment at Shenzhen's "Research Institute for Wearable Technology" and promoting strategic tech and innovation collaboration between China and Canada. While in Shenzhen, Professor Mann signed cooperation agreements valued at more than 11 million Canadian dollars.
Mann also met with Zimin Gao, the Vice Mayor of Shenzhen, and presented to him the first world's underwater musical instrument - the hydraulophone. Mann, who also serves as the chief scientist of "Sino-Canadian International Innovation Centre" gave the keynote speech at the "2017 High-tech Innovation Summit of China (Shenzhen) and Canada (Ontario)" where he presented "Humanistic Intelligence: A New Form of Intelligence for the Cyborg and shared his vision for the future of wearable computing and other technology trends for the future.
