Media Releases

ModiFace invests in augmented reality, artificial intelligence talent at U of T

April 7, 2017

Toron­to, ON – Aug­ment­ed real­i­ty start­up Mod­i­Face will make a major announce­ment Tues­day, aimed to accel­er­ate devel­op­ment of aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (AR) and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) tal­ent at Canada’s top-ranked engi­neer­ing school.

The com­pa­ny, found­ed by Pro­fes­sor Parham Aara­bi of The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Depart­ment of Elec­tri­cal & Com­put­er Engi­neer­ing, uses AR and AI to build advanced facial visu­al­iza­tion soft­ware for the beau­ty and med­ical indus­tries. Mod­i­Face tech­nol­o­gy pow­ers over 100 AR appli­ca­tions by For­tune 500 brands includ­ing Sepho­ra, L’Oreal, Aller­gan, Vichy and Clairol, among oth­ers.

“The future of Mod­i­Face is high­ly depen­dent on our access to the best AR engi­neers in the world,” says Aara­bi. “For AR, it takes about a year for a new grad­u­ate to get up to speed with the lat­est con­cepts in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, sys­tems engi­neer­ing, and com­put­er vision. As a result, we want to invest in stu­dents ear­ly, while they’re still in school, to start giv­ing them the best train­ing in these fast-mov­ing fields.”

Aara­bi will be joined by The Hon­ourable Reza Mori­di, Ontario Min­is­ter of Research, Inno­va­tion and Sci­ence, and Cristi­na Amon, Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Applied Sci­ence & Engi­neer­ing.

Jour­nal­ists will have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak with Aara­bi fol­low­ing the announce­ment.

Event details

Mod­i­Face announces major invest­ment in AR, AI at U of T
Tim­ing: Tues­day, April 11, 2017, Announce­ment at 9:20 am; Q&A at 9:40 am
Loca­tion: Hart House, 7 Hart House Cir­cle, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
East Com­mon Room [Map]

Media con­tact:
Mar­it Mitchell
U of T Engi­neer­ing
416–978-4498 (desk), 647–228-4358 (cell)
marit.mitchell@utoronto.ca