Steve DiAntonio and
Bill Ross
National Robotics Engineering Consortium (NREC), CMU
Mauldin Auditorium (NSH 1305)
Refreshments 3:15 pm
Talk 3:30 pm
The National Robotics Engineering Consortium (NREC) was created as a
robotics technology transfer and commercialization organization in 1996.
Over that time, the NREC has grown substantially in the number and size
of its projects, and more importantly, has improved its track record for
technology transfer. The first half of this talk will present brief
case studies of successful and unsuccessful commercialization projects
to highlight typical obstacles that must be overcome to commercialize
technology. The second half of the talk will describe in detail an
exciting machine vision project underway with both NREC and RI
researchers that has strong potential to dramatically reduce the cost of
pharmaceutical drug discovery.
The PsychoGenics SmartCube project automates the study of mouse behavior
by combining custom-designed hardware, computer vision software, and
data mining techniques. The SmartCube can produce rich behavioral data
in quantities which have never been seen before, enabling PsychoGenics
to amass a powerful database describing the behavioral effects of
thousands of potential drug compounds. The SmartCube concept shows great
promise for the discovery of new, powerful drugs to treat depression,
anxiety, schizophrenia and other psychological disorders.
Steve DiAntonio has been Director for Strategic Business Development at
the NREC for 4 years and is responsible for obtaining sponsored research
funding from industrial and government clients. He has a total of 19
years experience in senior sales and marketing positions for technology
development organizations, software companies and electronics
manufacturing companies. He has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from
Lehigh University and an MBA from Harvard University.
Bill Ross has been a staff member in RI for 13 years and has worked on a
variety of robotics and computer vision projects. For the past 3 years,
Bill has been at the NREC working on the commercialization of RI
computer vision and robotics technologies.
TBD
The Robotics Institute is part of the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University.
