The radio segment, called “Crowdfunding Science,” aired on January 25, 2014 and discussed the lack of funding researchers have access to for commercialization, making it harder to advance research that could be helping people in a variety of industries.
WaveCheck’s crowdfunding campaign is an example of how MaRS Innovation gets creative when traditional funding channels take too long or run dry, speeding up the commercialization process.
Minuum’s potential goes far beyond improved touchscreen typing. The company’s so-called “one-dimensional” keyboard approach can actually be applied to a wide range of scenarios, in particular, highly touted new wearable technologies like Google Glass, and motion-sensing technologies such as Microsoft’s Kinect and the Leap Motion 3D controller, enabling users to type “anywhere.”
2013 was an exceptional year for MaRS Innovation. Here are the top 10 news stories from our commercialization portfolio. 1. MaRS Innovation secures a $15 million CECR funding extension In January,…
From left, WaveCheck campaign co-director Elizabeth Monier-Williams contributing artist Janet F. Potter, WaveCheck supporter Carmen Tellez O’Mahony, contributing artist Deniz Ergun Seker, WAAC President Dale Butterill and contributing artist Lila Miller.WaveCheck’s appreciation event was held at The Louise Temerty Breast Cancer Centre, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.
Present were several members of the Women’s Art Association of Canada (WAAC) who donated 11 of the 15 artworks to the campaign. Also present was Dale Butterill, president of WAAC, who expressed support during her opening remarks. Together with members of WAAC, contributing artists donated over $15,000 worth of art to the campaign.
Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for North American clinical study during Breast Cancer Awareness Month; 12 artists donate 13 original works worth over $15,000 to support campaign
Toronto, Canada (October 9, 2013) — WaveCheck— a painless, non-surgical clinical technique developed by a Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre oncologist and a Ryerson University physicist and supported by MaRS Innovation — is poised to transform chemotherapy response monitoring for women with breast cancer.
Dr. Gregory Czarnota of Sunnybrook Health Sciences (left) and Professor Michael Kolios of Ryerson University, WaveCheck’s inventors.
WaveCheck combines traditional ultrasound with new software to detect responses to chemotherapy in breast cancer tissues. By making better, more accurate information available about a woman’s response to her chemotherapy treatment in weeks rather than months, WaveCheck creates greater transparency through dialogue between a women and her doctors, empowering her to participate in discussions about whether a given chemotherapy treatment is effective.
Contribute to WaveCheck‘s Indiegogo campaign and help make this technology available to all women with breast cancer faster.
Developed by Dr. Gregory Czarnota, chief of Radiation Oncology at Sunnybrook’s Odette Cancer Centre, and Michael C. Kolios, professor of Physics and Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Applications of Ultrasound at Ryerson, WaveCheck has been used in clinical studies with nearly 100 women receiving upfront, neoadjuvant chemotherapy to treat locally-advanced breast cancer. These results are published in two leading journals, Clinical Cancer Research and Translational Oncology.
In the Indiegogo campaign video, Czarnota, Kolios and three of the 100 women who participated in the first Sunnybrook study explain WaveCheck’s impact.
“The hard truth for women with breast cancer is that 60 to 70 per cent of chemotherapy treatments fail,” said Czarnota, who is also a senior scientist and director of cancer research at Sunnybrook Research Institute and assistant professor in the University of Toronto’s Departments of Radiation Oncology and Medical Biophysics within the Faculty of Medicine. “The 1.5 million women worldwide who will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year need to know that their chemotherapy is working as soon as possible. But this kind of treatment monitoring doesn’t currently exist in standard clinical practice. Instead, a woman’s tumour response is evaluated after she completes her chemotherapy treatment, which is typically a four- to six-month process.
Every six weeks, MaRS Innovation’s marketing and communications manager writes a guest post for the MaRS Discovery District blog profiling MI’s activities or one of our start-up companies. You can read the original post on the MaRS blog.
On Monday, June 17, Whirlscape Inc. released the beta version of its hotly anticipated, tiny, one-dimensional digital keyboard, Minuum: “the little keyboard for big fingers.”
If you follow tech gadget news, you’ve likely read about or even supported the company’s successful Indiegogo campaign, which raised more than US$87,000—over 870% above their modest initial goal of $10,000—from nearly 10,000 supporters who have now become beta users for the product.
The stats don’t end there. By number of funders, the Minuum Keyboard Project’s campaign is in Indiegogo’s top 10 of all time and is ranked No. 2 among all technology campaigns. Over 1.1 million people worldwide viewed Minuum’s original teaser video on YouTube, which the Whirlscape team edited and shot themselves.
The Minuum Project has achieved such international buzz that even the news of a beta launch from Whirlscape Inc. without a firm date generated media interest.
Toronto-based Whirlscape developed Minuum, the one-dimensional simplified keyboard for smartphones, tablets and wearable technology. This idea gained a great deal of attention back in March when they went live on crowd-funding site IndieGogo. […]
Those who backed the initiative were promised early access to the beta app for Android sometime in June. Minuum seems to be on track as we’ve been informed that the beta app for Android is scheduled for release “early next week.”
Over 9,600 people funded Toronto start-up’s one-dimensional mobile keyboard
The final tally for Minuum’s Indiegogo campaign: $87,369 in one month from 9,648 supporters.
TORONTO, Canada (April 18, 2013) — The Indiegogo campaign for Minuum, “the little keyboard for big fingers,” created by Whirlscape Inc., has closed after raising $87,369 in one month.
Minuum is a one-dimensional, tiny keyboard that frees up mobile screen space while allowing fast, accurate typing. Its specialized, patent-protected auto-correction algorithm allows highly imprecise typing, configuring the difference between what you type and what you mean in real time and getting it right even if you miss every single letter.
The campaign’s initial goal — $10,000 to fund the launch of an Android keyboard app — was reached within 14 hours. Since its launch on March 18, the campaign video has been viewed over 1.1 million times.
Did you know Minuum’s campaign is in Indiegogo’s top 10 of all time for projects with the largest number of supporters?
The little keyboard for big fingers, which launched an Indiegogo campaign a week ago today to support the launch of its Android keyboard app and a wearable development kit, is currently less than $4,000 from its crowd-funded stretch goal of $60,000.
The company was featured on CTV News on Mar. 24, 2013. The CTV video story and photos of CEO Will Walmsley and CTO Xavier Snelgrove are available on CTV’s website.
MaRS Innovation staff and WaveCheck Campaign Co-directors Dr. Fazila Seker and Elizabeth Monier-Williams spoke with the CBC’s Colleen Ross about the process of crowdfunding WaveCheck’s partner-based clinical studies on “The World This Weekend.”
