Catalin Voss
German inventor and entrepreneur (born 1995)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Catalin Voss is a German-born inventor and entrepreneur. Voss is considered a pioneer in applying artificial intelligence and machine learning for societal impact in areas such as childhood literacy, Autism, financial inclusion in emerging economies, and the criminal justice system.[1][2][3][4]
Catalin Voss | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1995 (age 30–31) |
| Education | Stanford University |
| Occupations | Entrepreneur; co-founder & CTO of Ello Technology, Inc. |
| Known for | Inventor, Founder |
He is currently the co-founder and CTO of Ello, an AI-powered reading tutor for children.[5]
Early life and education
Catalin Voss was born in Heidelberg, Germany.[6] At the age of 12, when the Apple iPhone was released for the first time, Voss taught himself iOS development[7] and launched a podcast and online tutorials about iPhone app development which attracted over 200,000 viewers.[8]
At age 15, Voss caught the attention of Steve Capps, one of the creators of the original Apple Macintosh, who offered him an internship working on mobile app development at PayNearMe.[9] With Capps, he helped to design, develop, and co-launch the mobile payment platform, and was kept on by CEO Danny Shader as a software engineer.[9][7][6]
Voss graduated with honors from Stanford University in 2016 with a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science and a specialization in Artificial Intelligence.[10] Voss enrolled in Stanford’s PhD program in Artificial Intelligence, but has been on leave since 2020 to co-found Ello.[5]
Sension
While still an undergraduate student at Stanford, Voss founded Sension, a computer vision startup.[11] Sension developed advanced facial motion capture technology that could be used for a variety of applications from driver monitoring systems to educational analytics, but the original purpose of the technology was to track student engagement during online courses.[8] Voss served as CEO of Sension and led the development of the company's core technology.[11]
In 2015, Sension was acquired by GAIA Systems Solutions, a Toyota-affiliated company, for an undisclosed amount.[12]
Autism Glass
While working on the facial recognition technology for Sension, Voss realized that emerging technology–which could identify emotions–would be helpful for his Autistic cousin.[13] Voss shared with the NY Times how his cousin used to practice making facial expressions in the mirror to learn to recognize emotions[2] With Terry Winograd and Dennis Wall, Voss founded the Autism Glass Project to develop a wearable AI system that could provide real-time social cues to children with ASD.[14] The system used machine learning algorithms to analyze facial expressions and provide visual and auditory feedback to the wearer through a heads-up display.[15] Children would wear Google Glasses which would provide information to the wearer about the emotions expressed by people around them.[16]
In 2016, Voss and his team published a paper at the IEEE Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV) describing their approach, which won the best paper award.[17]
Over the next several years, the Autism Glass system was evaluated in a series of clinical trials at Stanford Medical School which found that children who used the device showed significant improvements in their social skills and ability to recognize emotions.[18]
In 2018, the intellectual property for the Autism Glass system was licensed to Cognoa, a pediatric behavioral health company.[19]
DukaConnect
In 2017, Voss co-founded DukaConnect, a Nairobi-based startup that developed a low-cost, computer vision-based point of sale system for small retailers in Kenya which used a smartphone camera to automatically recognize products and record sales, eliminating the need for barcode scanners.[3] DukaConnect’s mission was to harness the power of technology to help small business owners in Kenya focus on what matters to grow their businesses sustainably.[20] In 2018, Mastercard acquired DukaConnect for an undisclosed amount and integrated the technology into its Lab for Financial Inclusion in Nairobi.[21]
Project Recon
As a PhD student at Stanford, Voss co-led a project called "Project Recon" that used natural language processing to analyze racial disparities in parole hearing transcripts in California.[22] Voss and his team collected and analyzed over 35,000 parole hearing transcripts from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).[23]
When the CDCR refused to release certain data on inmate race and attorney representation, citing privacy concerns, Voss and his team sued the CDRC to gain access to the data.[24] In 2021, a California Superior Court judge ruled in Voss's favor, ordering the CDCR to release the requested data.[1]
Ello
In 2020, Voss co-founded (with Tom Sayer and Elizabeth Adams) Ello, an AI-powered reading tutor for children, and currently serves as its CTO.[25]
Ello's stated mission is to maximize the potential of every child by providing access to high-quality, personalized reading instruction.[26]
In the summer of 2023, Ello raised a $15.5 million Series A funding round, led by Project A and Goodwater Capital; other funders include Netflix founder Reed Hastings, Ravensburger, and Y Combinator.[4]
In the fall of 2023, Ello was named one of the top 10 AI products for ethical and responsible AI practices by Common Sense Media.[27]
In January 2024, Ello released an all-digital version of the product, which includes a library of over 700 decodable books which align with the Science of Reading.[28] Dr. Tim Shanahan, literacy expert from the University of Illinois at Chicago, joined Ello as an advisor as this shift occurred.[29][5]
Ello's core technology is a speech recognition model, trained on over 130,000 hours of child speech, that analyzes children's speech in real-time.[30]
Personal life
List of awards
Patents
- US10835167B2, Voss, Catalin; HABER, Nicholas Joseph & Wall, Dennis Paul et al., "Systems and methods for using mobile and wearable video capture and feedback plat-forms for therapy of mental disorders", issued 2020-11-17
- US20240071185A1, Voss, Catalin, "Mobile device platform for automated visual retail product recognition", issued 2024-02-29
- US9626701B2, Capps, Stephen P.; Minor, John Paul & Voss, Catalin, "System and method for facilitating cash payment transactions using a mobile device", issued 2017-04-18
- US9892315B2, Voss, Catalin & HABER, Nicholas Joseph, "Systems and methods for detection of behavior correlated with outside distractions in examinations", issued 2018-02-13
- WO2022140166A1, VOSS, Catalin; SAYER, Thomas Robert & Nag, Anish, "Systems and methods for speech validation", issued 2022-06-30