Research and Innovation : Innovation + Job News

Here's something we could all use less of: gridlock. A political lightening rod and increasing limit on daily routines in Toronto, traffic congestion eats up our time, not to mention reserves of patience and good humour. Now one UofT student thinks she's found a way to help tame congestion, by getting the lights at individual intersections to communicate directly with one another.

Samah El-Tantawy was inspired by the awful state of the roads both here in Toronto and in Cairo, where she grew up. Her traffic-management system formed the core of her graduate work (El-Tantawy earned her PhD in civil engineering in 2012), and is based on innovations in artificial intelligence research.

Right now, El-Tantawy explains, there are three types of traffic-management systems operating in Toronto:

• Set times for light changes, based on prior calculations using historical records; these are optimized, but don't adapt to the circumstances of any given moment.
• Actuated controls: detectors under the pavement which send calls to traffic lights, so those lights can change based on immediate conditions. The shortcoming with these is that they are operating "as if blind," El-Tantaway says. Since they only have inputs from vehicles in one direction, they don't work based on the state of the intersection or road network as a whole.
• Adaptive controls that are optimized in real time, based on traffic approaching an intersection; this system exists at about 300 intersections in Toronto. The main limitation with this system is that it works via a centralized command system, and thus requires a substantial communications network. (Any failure in that centralized system has, correspondingly, a huge impact on the whole network.)

The system El-Tantawy has developed is based on individualized intersection control, and comes with lower capital costs and risks of interruption compared to the adaptive control system. As she explains it, "each intersection sends and receives information from its neighbours, and each of the neighbours do this in a cascading fashion." Essentially, the lights at each intersection communicate with the ones at the connecting intersections, and this allows the lights at each intersection to change based on what those neighbouring lights are doing.

Unlike scheduled cascading traffic lights (where you hit a series of greens in a row if traffic conditions allow you to pace yourself just right), this system includes real-time responses to changing traffic conditions. "Each one decides for itself," El-Tantawy says, "but it considers what decisions what might be taken by the neighbours by having a model for each neighbour, and that model is built based on receiving information every second. They are actually deciding simultaneously."

According to El-Tantawy's simulation models, her traffic management system—called Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning for Integrated Network of Adaptive Traffic Signal Controllers (or MARLIN-ATSC)—can reduce delays by up to 40 per cent, and yield a 15-25 per cent savings in travel time. It can also have environmental knock-off effects—up to a 30 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions, since vehicles are spending less time on the road and travelling more efficiently when they do.

City of Toronto staff are aware of El-Tantawy's work, and she's hoping it will eventually be implemented in some intersections here. She needs to conduct field tests first, however, and is currently looking for quieter areas suitable for pilot projects next summer.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Samah El-Tantawy

The development of medical science has always been driven by advances in technology, and modern innovations are bringing the two closer together than ever. To help make the most of that relationship, St. Michael's Hospital and Ryerson University have announced a new partnership: an initiative that will allow clinician scientists from the former and engineers from the latter to work together collaboratively.

The Institute for Biomedical Engineering and Science Technology (iBest) will be housed in the Keenan Research Centre at St. Michael's, and will include space for about 15 Ryerson faculty members and another 40 or so students—researchers whose work has health care applications. It will also include a new incubator, similar to Ryerson's well-known Digital Media Zone, specifically for the development of biomechanical products that can be commercialized and used in patient care.

"I think it's the increased reliance on technological developments in the delivery of medical treatment that has catalyzed collaborations" like iBest, says Dr. Ori Rotstein, director of the Keenan Research Centre. "In the era before computing to have a computer scientist to help you manage data wasn't really something that you did," he adds by way of example. "Before computers and advanced engineering it was kind of ad hoc."

These collaborations reflect an advancement that certainly is welcome, and perhaps overdue. Though there are many sectors that have been working in this interdisciplinary way for a long time, it has come more slowly in academic medical contexts. Rotstein goes on: "Industry has been doing this for a long time. There are lot of companies that make medical devices that have been doing this for a long time. Academic institutions have been siloed…but the need is really an imperative."

In addition to advances in patient care, iBest will provide new opportunities for student training. "The idea will be that we're going to collaborate in student supervision," Rotstein explains. "That means it's possible if there's a medical student or a resident who wants to do his or her research training in an area that's relevant to science and engineering…they could be co-supervised."

iBest is slated to open in the spring of 2015.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Ori Rotstein, Director, Keenan Research Centre for Biomedical Science
Photo: Yuri Markarov, Medical Media, St. Michael's Hospital

A year-old partnership between Toronto incubator MaRS and Microsoft just got bigger.

According to a new deal, known as Biz Spark, start-up entrepreneurs will be getting direct and indirect development help from the tech giant.

"Startups will get access to software and tools provided under the Biz Spark program," says Ryan Poissant, a MaRs advisor in IT, communication and entertainment. "Select MaRS clients will also benefit from connecting with experienced product development teams and access to Microsoft's deep industry networks of partners and customers."

Poissant describes the potential beneficiaries of this deal as being companies who figure they can benefit from "Microsoft's tools and industry verticals."

"Microsoft brings a deep understanding of design and development tools and practices as well as expertise in building scalable, enterprise grade applications that reside in the cloud," Poissant says. "This expertise complements the MaRS platform that helps companies move efficiently from the discovery phase to product/market fit through a combination of advisory services, partnerships, access to capital and networks."

MaRs stands for Medical and Related Sciences, though since it was named, its purview has expanded into unrelated fields.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Ryan Poissant

A trip to Ghana in 2009 by a few self-funded Scadding Court-area teens is paying off, and in the process offering an excellent example of how rich countries can learn from poor ones.

"What we saw there were all kinds of rusted out containers where people were selling chicken, cutting hair," says Scadding Court Community Centre head Kevin Lee. "We came back to Toronto, there's so much under-utilized public space, like sidewalks that are three times the size they need to be, and on Dundas Street, economically depressed, with no eyes on the street…."

So now, there are 19 containers on Dundas just west of Bathurst, and a charette at the Scadding Court Community Centre on Tuesday brought together architects, designers, city planners, public health workers and community members to show and tell how that might be expanded into the city's first container mall.

The first container went up three years ago, very shortly after the group, of which Lee was a part, got back from Ghana. At first, it was just food, but it soon morphed into retail, including Stin Can, a bike repair shop run by two 19-year-olds, graduates of the Biz Start program who, according to Lee, were able to start up with just $2,000. (You may want to think about stopping by their container instead of your usual local.)

"What we're trying to do," Lee says, "is establish a template for the city of Toronto in terms of economic development at the grassroots level. Economic development doesn’t just mean trying to attract Google to move their head office to Toronto."

The city just found $80,000 to buy two or three new containers, according to Councillor Adam Vaughan, in whose ward the containers sit. Now they’re just waiting for a council vote on approvals, which could come as early as this week.

"You put 10 bureaucrats around a table, all it takes is one to say no to scrap things," Vaughan says from the floor of the charette. He says the original idea came from a private company who wanted to set up some containers on Queen West. Heritage Toronto nixed it, according to Vaughan, saying the only spot they could use was the parking lot at Queen and Phoebe, so the company dropped the idea.

The charette, and the community centre's central involvement, is a way, Vaughan hopes, to circumvent the usual impediments to Toronto ever having nice things. "What we're looking for here is a way to say yes."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Kevin Lee, Adam Vaughan

Nuit Blanche, the international sunset-to-sunrise arts festival that first came to Toronto a few years ago, celebrates art and the ways it can interact with a city's streets, buildings, and public spaces. At its best moments, it transforms the way we experience the world around us. This year, one installation in particular aimed to do something a bit different: change the way we experience the world within.

That exhibit was called My Virtual Dream, and its primary creators weren't traditional artists but rather scientists from Baycrest Health Science and the University of Toronto's faculty of medicine. Their aim: gather data for an ongoing research project, while simultaneously giving participants the chance to engage in a dialogue with their own brains, by monitoring and displaying own brain wave activity, and then helping them play around with the visualizations that resulted.

If you walked by Queen's Park Crescent and College during Nuit Blanche on October 5, you might have seen a large geodesic dome that had been put up on the street, emitting a changing array of pastel lights. Inside: a semicircle of 20 participants, each with a wireless brain-computer interface on their heads. That interface allowed participants to watch their own brain wave activity on monitors in front of them, and see how it changed over time.

Participants were asked to alternately relax or concentrate, and as they did they could see how that affected the visualizations on the screen. It also affected what was happening in the entire dome: an animated projection light up the interior of the dome, and changed based on whether the group of participants tended to relax more or concentrate more. At the same time, a band played improvised music based on how those visuals changed.

The entire thing was beautiful, but it also served a purpose: the team of researchers gathered 550 data sets that night to help them refine the computer software that drove this whole process, called The Virtual Brain. Still in development, the Virtual Brain is a system for modelling the human brain. It can be used to simulate either an individual person's brain, if a researcher has readings from a specific subject, or create a generalized model based on a population.

Dr. Randy McIntosh is VP of research at Baycrest Health Sciences and the project lead for the Virtual Brain. He explains one way the simulator will be able to help in clinical settings, by providing individualized health care: "If you have someone who, for instance, has a stroke and you're considering various therapies, you can test the therapies in the virtual brain first to see which is likely to be most effective."

The data his team gathered at Nuit Blanche was especially significant, McIntosh says, in part because it was collected in such an unusual setting: "The idea is to make [the Virtual Brain] adaptable to any environment. it was really trying to push the technology in directions it can't currently go…If it works in that environment, it can work anywhere."

But it wasn't all about the data, McIntosh added. "This intersection of art and science is really cool because it really does capture the heart of what it is to be a scientist and what it is to be an artist," he went on. "The artists really needed to understand the science and the scientists really needed to understand the art" in order to make the project work. It was a deep collaboration that those who passed through the dome this past weekend certainly appreciated.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Dr. Randy McIntosh, VP of research, Baycrest Health Sciences

With the help of the provincial government, and in conjunction with private sector partner Schneider Electric, Ryerson University will soon be launching a new laboratory dedicated to smart grid innovations.

A smart grid is simply one that gathers fine-grained information about electricity users—where they are, what their usage patterns are, when peak and lower demand times are, and so on—and uses it to more efficiently and effectively distribute power across that grid. It can empower users to be more collaborative energy consumers (by helping us know when the grid is nearing capacity), minimize blackouts and brownouts, and also facilitate the better use of renewable energy as a power source.

The smart grid lab will provide students with a learning ground, so they can receive specialized training in smart grid technology, and also be a research hub, a venue for the development and testing of innovations in smart grid technology.

“Ryerson University’s Centre for Urban Energy is committed to solving urban energy challenges,” Sri Krishnan, interim dean of Ryerson's engineering school, emphasized. “Working with Schneider Electric to develop this lab enables us to take this even further and work towards creating innovative solutions within the smart grid technology space, while also providing Ryerson students the benefit of being trained in a state-of-the-art facility."

The lab will be constructed at Ryerson's Centre for Urban Energy, and is scheduled to open in July of 2014.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Matthew Kerry, Marketing and Communications Manager, Centre for Urban Energy, Ryerson University

Founded in 2011, MaRS's Data Catalyst gathers data from partners in several sectors—healthcare, entrepreneurship, and energy—and analyses it to help support the development of the province's innovation economy. This past weekend, Data Catalyst organized the city's first ever Green Energy Hackathon, to give local app and product developers a chance to work with some of that data as well.

Data from many of the province's smart metres—from 2.7 million households, to be more precise—is currently being gathered in what's called the Green Button initiative. It's the Green Button open API that was made available to participants at the Hackathon—data that enables users to better understand how Ontarians are actually using their energy. Using that data, participants at the hackathon came up apps that do everything from help individuals know the best time to use certain appliances to warning small businesses about impending weather disruptions.

"There's a big hairy problem about how to engage people in their use of energy," says Joe Greenwood, program director of Data Catalyst. That problem, he goes on, has a lot to do with behavioural economics: even though we could save money by changing our energy consumption habits, it turns out people aren't entirely rational in how they handle such choices—which leads to the thorny question of how exactly to induce them to alter those choices.

On the bright side, Greenwood explains, Ontario has also made one of the biggest investments in smart metres, which creates a big opportunity for smart developers to give people the capacity to manage their energy use more effectively. Because we're starting to learn more about how we currently consume energy, we can start experimenting with tools that will motivate people to consume it better.

One key theme Greenwood noticed in the apps that were started at the Hackathon—some of which will be getting support for further development—is simplification. Though energy companies and large corporations may look at charts and graphs to help them determine their choices, individuals work differently; many of the developers started looking at giving rewards—badges or air miles, or using humour—as tools to help people change.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Joe Greenwood, program director, MaRS Data Catalyst

"In a market economy, if you solve a big problem you get a big reward," says Tom Rand, managing partner of the MaRS Cleantech Fund.

Generating substantial amounts of environmentally sustainable energy is certainly a big problem, and the Cleantech Fund's goal is to try and find the emerging companies who will help solve it. The $30 million private venture capital fund, located at MaRS, has just landed a new $500,000 investment courtesy of RBC Generator, the bank's investment arm that looks specifically for opportunities in companies that address social and environmental issues. It's the first investment deal RBC has announced as part of that initiative.

Green energy is obviously a huge sector; the MaRS Cleantech Fund focuses primarily on "early stage, disruptive, low carbon energy infrastructure," Rand explains. (More concretely, this means innovations like smart grids that better distribute energy.) The Fund has already invested in eight companies, and is aiming for 10 to 12 in total.

Though the fund is entirely privately financed, Rand also emphasizes the importance of being located at MaRS, which he calls "the most serious clean-tech innovation machine in Canada by far."

MaRS assists the fund with deal flow—the most promising new companies can be found there, so for investors it provides fertile ground for sniffing out the best opportunities—and their ongoing support with essential processes like preparation for the market make it, Rand adds, "the most high powered, high octane help you can get."

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Tom Rand, Managing Partner, MaRS Cleantech Fund

Toronto has theatre festivals, art festivals, music festivals, food festivals, comedy festivals, vegetarian food festivals--festivals for just about every cultural interest, it seems. But we don't have a science festival, or at least we didn't until now. That will change next month, when the University of Toronto launches what it hopes will become an annual event: the Toronto Science Festival.

Just like all the other festivals we're familiar with, the goal in large part is to demystify, to attract curious members of the public who aren't experts or deeply involved in a certain community, but want to learn more.

"The idea," says Michael Reid, public outreach coordinator for UofT's Dunlap Institute, "was to try and engage people in science in a new way. We run a lot of events that attract a sort of standard audiences--public lectures, tours of our observatory--those tend to attract a crowd of people who are already quite scientifically literate."

The intention with the Toronto Science Festival is to help the public engage with science in some nontraditional ways, to offer scientific programming in new formats, and to use those unexpected formats to help people understand some of the latest innovations and research developments coming out of UofT and other key institutions. (Reid describes it as being something like Luminato, but for all kinds of scientific engagement.)

"Very generally, I don't see a lot of science on the broader cultural landscape," Reid goes on. "There isn't to my knowledge any kind of major science knowledge event that's directed at everybody." Which is why, perhaps, TSF's first year will include such unconventional events as a jazz performance by a climate scientist whose lyrics discuss physics, and a biologically-inspired dance performance by a classical Indian company.

The festival is co-sponsored by the Dunlap Institute and by UofT Science Engagement, a new office created in the past year by the university to try to foster public engagement with science and innovation.

The 2013 Toronto Science Festival will run from September 27–29 at locations across the St. George campus.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Michael Reid, Public Outreach Co-ordinator, Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics

Toronto is stocked with an increasing array of incubators, accelerators, mentorship programs, and commercialization programs. But how do you know if you're ready to apply and participate in those full-fledged programs? One way to find out: try out an idea in a low-risk environment, and garner reaction before you get too far along.

Would-be entrepreneurs will have the chance to do just that at Startup Weekend, coming to Toronto August 9-11. Startup Weekends run in cities across the world, organized by a non-profit of the same name, and the goal is simple: help someone launch a startup in just 54 hours.

This upcoming Toronto installment has a theme: education.

"The startup weekends are a movement of entrepreneurs across the world who want to get together and practice the startup process in a really compressed timeframe," explains MaRS education specialist Joseph Wilson, one of the event's co-organizers. "The EDU angle on it is that there's so much interest in the education entrepreneurship space that specific verticals of startup weekends [became appealing]."

Startup Weekend EDU will be the first sector-specific weekend in Toronto, and the first education-themed weekend in Canada. "Toronto and Ontario are very good relatively speaking in education," Wilson continues, "and this has informed the entrepreneurship scene in the city. In the last few years we've seen an explosion of ed tech companies...and there are even more in the water, which we're hoping to draw out with something like this."

The weekend is open to people with a wide variety of skill sets, ranging from developers to designers to educators. The weekend is structured progressively: at the outset anyone can pitch an idea, and then based on the strength of various pitches, teams form around the most promising and work through them throughout the weekend.

"You can't build a product" in a weekend, of course, Wilson concedes. But what you can do, "is push yourself to push out a prototype or a quick beta, to test the concept, to quickly test the idea in the most practical way possible." It's a form of crowdsourcing, in a way, except not to raise money but to establish an idea's viability.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Joseph Wilson, co-organizer, Startup Weekend EDU

Many of Toronto's growing roster of accelerators, incubation labs, and other innovation centres are based in the downtown core--close to research facilities, universities, hospitals, and other amenities. But we need innovation across the city, and it's with just that goal in mind that a brand new accelerator, the York Entrepreneurship Development Institute, has been launched. The first cohort will begin the program this September.

One thing that organizers are emphasizing with this program in particular is the social and cultural value entrepreneurship can contribute to a community. Accepted fellows will fall into two groups: 10 entrepreneurs will be on a for-profit track, and another 10 on a not-for-profit track. YEDInstitute is hoping to support growth in traditional businesses and in non-profits equally, and is accepting applicants with an a wide range of sectors, from health and wellness to agriculture to real estate.

The goal, explains program director Dana Ayrapetyan, is to help the non-profit sector become more self-sufficient. "It is not as efficient as it could be," she says, and developing a stronger entrepreneurial culture around socially-motivated ventures is important for that reason.

More broadly, the 12-week program was created because the founders saw that "so many of the projects coming out of the current start-up ecosystem…had received seed funding but not necessarily long term business plan preparation, [and] couldn't establish long-term success. Those gems weren't really emerging."

YEDInstitute will combine both academic training with applied skills. Another contrast with other accelerators: selected participants won't receive funding up front, as part of their acceptance, but upon completion of the program they'll pitch the institute's own venture capital fund, for a chance to secure up to $500,000.

Applications are now open, and available online.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Dana Ayrapetyan, Program Director, York Entrepreneurship Development Institute

Correction notice: We originally misdescribed the program as being a project of York University directly. In fact, it is based out of the Schulich Executive Education Centre, but does not belong to York University or the Schulich School of Business.

The most interesting of the opportunities we've seen this week:

The Ontario Brain Institute, a major hub for research and medical commercialization, has two key positions open. They are looking for a knowledge translation lead and a communications lead; both for their outreach program.

Also looking for communications help is TechSoup Canada, which helps organizations with a social mission--non-profits, charities, social enterprises, and the like--make better use of technology. It's an entry level position, and those with compentence in French are particularly encouraged to apply.

In the environmental sector, the University of Toronto's sustainability office, which is charged with improving that institution's sustainability, is hiring a campaign coordinator to support and supervise a team of 10 students. It's a five month contract, but there may be opportunities to extend.

In senior hires, the Royal Ontario Museum is looking for a new managing director of ROM Contemporary Culture (formerly known as the Institute for Contemporary Culture) to take charge of positioning the centre as it evolves.

And in city-building organizations, non-profit 8-80 Cities, which works to make streets, transportation, and public space vibrant and available to all a city's residents, has two positions open: a director to lead some specific projects, and a more junior project coordinator, to support the organization's work.

Do you know of an innovative job opportunity? Let us know!

Entrepreneurship can come at any age--and often it can come very early in a person's working life. Hoping to give a leg up to some of the country's youngest and most promising entrepreneurs is The Next 36, a nine-month program that provides intensive mentorship and support to 36 undergraduates and recent graduates. They've just opened up applications for their 2014 cohort.

Program participants work in teams of three, each of which will develop a business aimed at the mobile technology market.

That doesn't mean that only developers and the technologically-oriented should apply though: participants come from all disciplines. The key quality applicants should demonstrate is leadership, explains marketing and events director Jon French.

It's not the sector that matters so much as the characteristic, someone with the ability to "look at an opportunity or challenge and turn it into a positive," he says. To that end, "a track record of excelling at at least one thing" is the single most important factor Next 36 looks for when selecting its finalists, which have included top athletes and musicians as well as coders and engineers. (In previous years participants have been split into roughly one-third technology majors, one-third business and commerce majors, and one-third students with a background in the humanities.)

While program participants spend their time with Next 36 developing a new business, immediate impact matters less than establishing the skills for long-term success, French says. Their main goal is that in 10 or 15 years, some of Canada's leading entrepreneurs will have come through the program, having learned the hard and soft skills they need to build viable businesses throughout a long entrepreneurial career.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Jon French, Director of Marketing and Events, The Next 36

Publishing technology company ScribbleLive recently announced that it has secured $8 million in new funding, via a group of several venture capitalists. (Their last major financing announcement came in November, 2011, when they landed $4 million in venture capital funds.)

Though you might not be familiar with the company's name, you've almost certainly encountered their products--the digital publishing tools they offer are used by many major media outlets, ranging from Reuters to ESPN. ScribbleLive focuses on real-time event coverage and on engagement tools; more recently they've expanded into syndication, giving outlets opportunities to distribute their stories to other publishers and bring in additional revenue.

The Toronto-based company currently has 43 employees locally and seven elsewhere. Expanding that team is at the top of their priority list, says CEO Michael De Monte. The new funding will enable ScribbleLive to pursue growth in two main areas: expansion into other regions (there are plants for New York and the American west coast) and expanding Scribble Marketplace (its new syndication tool). By year's end, De Monte estimates the company will have grown to about 65 positions. He anticipates they will hit 100 by the end of 2014.

ScribbleLive recently celebrated its fifth birthday, and we asked De Monte what changes he's seen in Toronto's innovation sector over that time.

"There is a community here that is supportive of new startups," he says, "but it was hard to find five years ago. There's more of it now."

More community, but perhaps not quite enough support for it. "There are a lot of other cities that are doing a lot more for their startup communities, " he goes on, "that have really embraced the innovation spirit."

In Toronto, by contrast, "we do a lot of talking about it," but don't take enough action, he says. De Monte cites the digital pockets he's seen in other cities--communities within cities that are wired, and offer supports, amenities, and professional development support for young workers--as something Toronto should aspire to.

"We do have pockets here," he concludes, "but it's always felt a little disconnected."

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Michael De Monte, CEO, ScribbleLive

It is the bane of every teacher's existence: grading. Though essential, it's also repetitive and time-consuming. It is also increasingly prone to concerns about inequity: from grade inflation to inconsistent standards across different classrooms, sometimes parents, students, and even teachers themselves have a hard time deciding just what the grades they have assigned actually mean.

Aiming to help with both those problems is Toronto startup Crowdmark. Founded by two University of Toronto mathematics experts--the department's associate chair, James Colliander, and graduate student Martin Muñoz--Crowdmark provides teachers with a suite of tools to facilitate faster grading, and enables teachers to handle large volumes of grading collaboratively.

To use Crowdmark, teachers input the questions for a test into its customized PDF-maker. The result is a full printout of that test, in which each page of the copy received by each student has a customized code printed on it. Students write the test as usual, completing their answers by hand, and then teachers scan those tests into Crowdmark before doing their grading online. Because each page of each test has a unique identifier, Crowdmark's cloud-based tools can then sort the tests on a number of axes--by student, or by page of the test.

A group of grade three teachers could, for instance, collaborate on writing a test, and then split up the grading so that one teacher grades all the students' answers to question one, a second teacher grades all the answers to question two, and so on. It can be faster than looking at a whole test student by student, and it ensures that every answer to a given question is graded according to the same criteria, rather than changing based on which teacher is doing the grading.

"Teachers are very excited right now about an idea called moderated marking," says Colliander, which is essentially an attempt to strip teacher biases, grade inflation, and other variations out of the grading process, so there is consensus on what, say, an "A" means in any particular set of circumstances. "The shuffling of paper prevents many teachers from engaging in this kind of assessment."  

In addition to the tools that can make initial grading more efficient, Colliander believes, because tests are stored in the cloud in an organized way, teachers will be able to glean more information from them--more easily tracking a particular student over time, for instance, or seeing how test difficulty changes year by year.

"There's a desire for a much more rapid, iterative way of learning," Colliander concludes. His hope is that Crowdmark will give teachers the capacity to keep pace with that.

Started with $200,000 in seed funding from the University of Toronto, Crowdmark has recently seen that boosted to $600,000--some from the university, and some from MaRS Innovation. Crowdmark also recently completed two pilot projects working with teachers in grades 3 and 6. The company is currently meeting with venture capitalists and putting together a Series A round of funding. They plan to launch publicly in time for the 2013/2014 academic year.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: James Colliander, co-founder, Crowdmark