Engineering school project turns into VeloCity startup

Three recent graduates of Waterloo’s nanotechnology engineering program are at work developing a product that, with a couple of key strokes on a smartphone or laptop, can transform any window or wall into an ever-changing display.

Hooman Safaee, Matin Esfahani and Shafi Siddiqi began work on the system as a fourth-year engineering project.  Now, the three are one of 30 startup companies at work in the VeloCity Garage after starting Lumotune in April. VeloCity is a University of Waterloo startup program that provides students and alumni with free workspace, mentoring, and opportunities for funding and networking.

“The age of big bulky black screens is slowly coming to an end,” says Esfahani, the company’s chief executive officer. “They can’t be easily scaled, they clutter space, and they are obstructive. We see a day when almost any surface can become a display. And we’re fortunate to consider ourselves taking steps towards that future.”

The Lumotone display is, essentially, a flexible three-layered sheet. The outer layers are a transparent plastic film that will adhere to just about any surface. The middle layer in this techno sandwich is a nano-material whose transparency depends on the voltage applied to it,” explains Esfahani.

Changing the display works like this: “The computer tells a controlling system which areas of the display need to go transparent or opaque. This controlling system then applies voltages to those areas and changes their transparency, ultimately forming an image. This is easier said than done. Trust me,” says Esfahani.

Winner at major technology competitions

A lot of people think this is a very good idea, including the judges of some major technology competitions. They were chosen as the best project at the 2013 Nanotechnology Engineering Fourth-year Design Project Symposium at the University of Waterloo, winning $2,000. The VeloCity Venture Fund Winter 2013 competition awarded them $25,000. They have also been given $60,000 through the Ontario Scientists and Engineers in Business Commercialization Fellowship , a University of Waterloo program for promising entrepreneurs that is supported by the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario.)

At the Launchpad $50K Prize competition they won $20,000 in addition to $1,000 for winning its People’s Choice Award. The partners are using this money to get the business off the ground and, so far, have not gone looking for outside investment.

“For now, we’re focused on the enterprise and commercial markets,” says Safaee, Lumotune’s business development manager. “Seamless integration through the transparency feature gives us an invaluable edge over other display technologies.”

And compared to conventional displays, “the power consumption is significantly lower,” he says.

Siddiqi, who’s responsible for technology and finance, says they would like to remain a research and development company and will probably leave the manufacturing to an outside firm. “Through winning these competitions and securing funding, Lumotune is in a great position financially to take the next steps required to commercialize this technology,” says Siddiqi.