Thursday, September 24, 2015
Ashutosh
Syal
(BASc
’14,
Systems
Design)
was
on
track
to
become
a
Toronto
Bay
Street
trader
when
John
Zelek
presented
his
third-year
class
with
an
issue.
Hundreds
of
millions
people
in
the
developing
world
have
uncorrected
vision
problems,
said
the
Waterloo
systems
design
engineering
professor.
The
mobile
eye
camps
that
serve
rural
areas
simply
can’t
keep
pace
with
demand.
Meanwhile,
many
discarded
smartphones
end
up
overseas.
Could
they
create
vision-screening
software
for
those
phones?
Syal,
Daxal
Desai
(BASc
’14,
Systems
Design)
and
four
of
their
classmates
took
up
the
challenge.
They
read
papers,
interviewed
experts
at
Waterloo’s
School
of
Optometry
and
started
designing
a
solution.
Four
months
later,
their
hardware
didn’t
work
and
their
software
performed
little
better
than
a
50/50
guess.
But
they
were
determined
to
persevere.
“The
ability
to
see
clearly
is
something
we
believe
everyone
should
have,”
Syal
explains.
The
next
year
Syal
and
Desai
developed
software
that
could
detect
short-sightedness
and
far-sightedness
in
a
matter
of
seconds.
The
pair
triumphed
in
the
2014
Velocity
Fund
Finals
and
made
it
to
the
top
20
list
of
global
finalists
for
the
2015
James
Dyson
Award.
To
commercialize
their
technology,
they
founded
EyeCheck.
Now
with
a
third
founder,
Rachel
Friesen,
the
startup
is
developing
a
hardware
solution
to
provide
highly
accurate
prescriptions,
which
gives
healthcare
workers
everywhere
portable
and
affordable
tools
to
treat
more
patients
more
quickly.
[Read
more]