Cornell Tech Celebrates Open Studio

Imagine a future when mobile devices can prevent traffic accidents, when virtual currency is traded in minutes, when technology can effectively distribute cash to those most in need around the globe. Over the past semester, Cornell Tech students have partnered with various organizations to address these real world problems.

“We are rethinking graduate education for the digital age,” said Dean Dan Huttenlocher, kicking off last week’s Open Studio event highlighting team projects. “And all of you are part of that experiment.”

Eight of the MEng and MBA student company challenges teams presented their work to an audience of faculty, staff, mentors, collaborators, and partners:

AOL: The team set out to create a messaging app using Bluetooth beacons to send messages to people based on their location. They deployed beacons throughout Cornell Tech to allow users to drop messages on campus, and explored the potential use of the beacons for bridging the physical and digital worlds for advertising and other purposes.

JP Morgan Chase: The JP Morgan Chase team started their presentation by posing a question to the audience: What if you had to find an article you read a month ago — but you had only a few moments to find it, and your career depended on it? The team worked on making JP Morgan Chase’s internal search more efficient by automating key word extraction, instead of having analysts input tags manually.

Segovia: Segovia manages the logistics of distribution and payments in emerging markets, helping get relief and care to communities affected by natural disasters. The team was tasked with developing biometric solutions to help direct cash to the world’s poor. They chose a palm vein reader, which is highly accurate, portable and could be integrated into in Segovia’s platform.

Tradeblock: Currently, settlement for the virtual currency bitcoin can take hours, involving a manual process of checking various accounts before making a trade. The team built an automated monitoring solution that brings data from traditional bank accounts and bitcoin wallets to the TradeBlock platform.

IMAX: Working with IMAX, a team developed MooChat, a new iOs messaging app for the fun and creative sharing of gifs (complete with cow puns). The team is working on a go-to market strategy and ideas to enhance the app with additional features.

Canary: Canary is a complete home security system in a single device, and the team worked on building and integrating a cybersecurity platform for it. Increasingly, physical security is tied to cybersecurity — there are more and more devices in the home, and each one introduces 25 new vulnerabilities. The team developed a way to bundle information into a single report to show residents if their router is secure, what devices are on their network and the potential vulnerabilities they represent.

ff Venture Capital: The team worked on creating a useful tool to identify the best way to market map a new industry sector. The map tells you what companies are in an ecosystem and how to position them against each other, to see where a new startup fits in.

Bloomberg: The Bloomberg team developed an eye gaze tracker for use on mobile devices, integrated with the existing phone camera. The team focused on improving driving safety. Tracking what a user’s eyes are looking at, the eye gaze tracker could alert a driver if they looked away, with the potential to connect with other apps to track safety, prevent accidents and, if an accident occurs, automate a 911 call.