International CES takes place every January in Las Vegas

Several teams from the University, including four from Columbia Engineering, are presenting their innovative technologies at the International CES—the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow—in Las Vegas in early January.

Columbia Technology Ventures (CTV), the University’s technology transfer office, will host two booths highlighting Columbia Engineering startups and fledgling technologies ripe for investment—these teams represent some of the exciting developments from New York City’s tech scene.

  • Algolux is a company based on technology developed by Shree Nayar, T.C. Chang Professor of Computer Science (CS). Combining simple lenses and mobile computing power, Algolux brings digital optics to smartphones, making pictures crisper, sharper, more luminous, and less blurry, and making camera modules thinner, lighter, and less costly to produce.
  • FLiCC, coming out of the University’s departments of computer science and physics (Connor Hailey, a Columbia College undergraduate majoring in physics and minoring in CS, and Tsuguo Aramaki, a post-doctoral student, astrophysics), combines a specially designed smartphone case with a deployable mirror to superimpose objects in front of the user onto his or her smartphone display, making smartphone use much simpler while walking.
  • NimbleDroid, developed in CS Associate Professor Junfeng Yang’s lab, improves both battery life and performance on any Android device by 40%, without hardware modifications.
  • Aquazap is a new technology coming out of the lab of Szabolcs Marka, Walter O. LeCroy, Jr. Associate Professor of Physics. This mosquito larvae killer utilizes ultrasonic vibration to eliminate mosquito larvae in water. The device will contribute to solving the global health crisis caused by water-borne, vector-based diseases such as malaria and dengue.
  • Chromation, a startup out of Electrical Engineering Associate Professor John Kymissis’ lab, uses a compact spectral sensor capable of sensing in UV-VIS-NIR ranges, to improve the capability and performance of portable and handheld devices, including water testing, point-of-care diagnostics, authentication, color quality control in manufacturing, and color matching in paint, printing, and textiles.

“Columbia has plenty of new and interesting technologies in development,” says Teresa Fazio, CTV Technology Licensing Officer and CES veteran. “It’s really exciting to be able to showcase them—along with some innovative startups—at CES. Our booth will be the one to watch in Las Vegas!”

At the tradeshow, CTV will also introduce technologies available for licensing and investment opportunities in the fields of computer science: multimedia, mobile apps, display technologies, sensors, low power electronics, green technologies, imaging, wireless communication, 3D scanning, next generation Internet, cameras, CPUs, cyber security, and augmented reality. The technologies, which represent some of Columbia’s more than 1,000 current assets available for licensing to companies and startup entrepreneurs, showcase many of the latest in developments coming out of Columbia University.   

—by Holly Evarts