Founders

Bernard Ghanem

Bernard is currently finishing up his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, with a concentration in Computer Vision, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He has a M.S in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the U of I and a B.S in ECE from the American University of Beirut. He is a native of the lovely mountain town of Betroumine in northern Lebanon. He is an academic high achiever and has been on various fellowships at the University of Illinois over his graduate education. He is as well known for his culinary skills as he is for solving ridiculously hard math problems. He enjoys all kinds of sports though he is known to dislike tennis (probably because he loses to Sanketh all the time). Bernard has an impeccable sense of style which shows through not only through his wardrobe but also his beautifully documented code. He has interned at Carnegie Mellon University, Siemens Medical Solutions and had to turn down opportunities at other top labs to take up his dream to be an entrepreneur. He is the Vice President and Treasurer of the company and our resident Dr. FIX IT.

Esther Resendiz

Esther Resendiz is many things. But most importantly she is a proud Texan. She is currently in the Ph.D. program in Electrical and Computer Engineering, with a concentration in Computer Vision, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She also has an M.S from the same department. She completed her B.S in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas, Austin (GO LONGHORNS!!!). She is a native of San Antonio, Texas. Fashion Latte is Esther's brain child. She is extremely passionate about fashion. She can be quite often found in the lab sneaking a peek at celebrity blogs and fashion retailer websites in between running her experiments in analyzing actions in video. She is the little engine that keeps this company running. Over the last year she has become our resident web technology guru. She is known to put all nighters figuring out optimal and elegant ways of crawling online retailers for their fashion images, on a diet of Red Bull. She has previously interned at companies such as Southwest Research and turned down opportunities at a top national laboratory to pursue the iV10 program. She is our President, Secretary and Motivator-in-Chief.

Sanketh Shetty

How Sanketh got into fashion is a mystery to most people he knows. However, by the end of August 2008 he was up and about recommending clothing and helping friends color coordinate. It has been a long journey from uber-geek to resident fashion critic for this third year Ph.D student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He has a M.S in ECE from North Carolina State University and a Bachelors in Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India. He is a native of Bangalore, India (which he claims is THE most fashionable city in the subcontinent). He is the resident data-mining expert and tireless idea generator.

Technical Advisor

David Forsyth

Professor David Forsyth is a leading researcher in the areas of computer vision and machine learning. He is a full professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of one of the leading text books on computer vision, Computer Vision - A Modern Approach. He is well published in areas including human activity recognition, pose estimation, and object recognition. He has also advised three other computer vision startups in Champaign and the Bay Area.

Web Design

Chad Olson

Chad Olson is the founder of Function 49, a design and programming outfit that services a wide variety of interactive, technical, and print projects. The firm's past undertakings have included web, tv, radio, cd-rom, and print. At present Olson is focused on implementing user interfaces and developing custom content management systems that allow clients to edit their own website content. After over eleven years in the field of design and advertising culminating in the genesis of Function 49 some 2 years ago, Chad's predilection for start ups led him to originate One Llama, an online music discovery engine. Indeed, his track record, replete with stints at start-ups, is testament to his penchant for the rewards and challenges that come with that terrain.

Olson's design philosophy focuses on leading the viewer to the content being presented through the optimum use of design, color, typography, animation, and user interaction principles. His design credo revolves around facilitating a clear path to the content, with special emphasis on key elements. He believes that animation, video, and other new technology should be selectively used, only when they serve content. Simply put, design ought to be clean, simple and get the point across.