Author: Grace Chang

UnifyID Takes Home the Win at SXSW!

Posted on by Grace Chang

Our first trip to SXSW didn’t disappoint! Among the legions of Interactive and Film conference goers, were scores of locals partaking in the immersive spectacle of Austin–attendees in all, 50k strong in the first week. For a bay area San Francisco startup, weird is relative.

At SXSW, Bravo promotes its new show, Stripped on 6th Street in Austin, and on our right, San Francisco from my Facebook feed in the same day, #stayweird. Photo credit: thanks Shannon! (?)

Companies, marketers, creatives, tastemakers, brands, and bands are all vying for visibility, reach, and engagement. The hype game was strong; however, if you could but for a moment suspend a cynic’s disbelief, those ice-cold Lone Stars and live music erupting in every drizzling corner of Austin became magical.

UnifyID was incredibly honored to place #1 in the Security and Privacy track at SXSW’s annual Interactive Accelerator but part of what made that win so sweet was the goodwill of the SXSW attendees. In a surprising moment on stage, a room of about 400 people became an intimate family affair for a few minutes. Together, we all sang happy birthday to Sophie, John’s newly turned 4-year old daughter.

Thank you to everyone at SXSW for making our exclusive Silent Disco Brunch a success and our Accelerator Pitch one for the books!

UnifyID Scores a Unanimous Win at RSA Innovation Sandbox!

Posted on by Grace Chang

Behind every great idea, there lies a kernel of unequivocal human truth and a long road of execution to realize those intentions. On Monday, February 13th, the UnifyID team delivered and unanimously won RSA’s 2017 Innovation Sandbox competition.

“UnifyID demonstrated they were the most innovative by proving there is a way to actually leverage the individuality of humans to improve security.”
– Linda Gray Martin, Director & General Manager of RSA Conference. 

UnifyID Founder and CEO, John Whaley captivated a 1,200-person standing-room-only audience on its toes after a 3-minute pitch and 3-minute rapid-fire line of questioning from a panel of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and large security company judges.

Watch the 3-minute pitch below!

Many thanks to RSA and all our supporters who also saw that unequivocal human truth: there is only one you in the world.

We are on a mission to change the world and build a revolutionary identity platform based on implicit authentication to make your security seamless.

Announcing the UnifyID Spring AI Fellowship

Posted on by Grace Chang

Today, we would like to announce the UnifyID AI Fellowship program for Spring 2017. This is the second edition of the fellowship (Fall 2016 cohort) and is expected to run for 12 weeks, February 23 through May 18. This selective, cross-disciplinary program covers the following areas:

  • Deep Learning
  • Signal Processing
  • Optimization Theory
  • Sensor Technology
  • Mobile Development
  • Statistical Machine Learning
  • Security and Identity
  • Human Behavior
  • UX/UI Development for the above areas
  • Tech Journalism for the above areas
  • Special Focus:

We will be assigning one fellow to work on fakenewschallenge.org in collaboration with Dr. Dean Pomerleau of the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute. If interested, please add a note in your application. We expect this fellowship applicant to have substantial experience with handling textual data and NLP expertise. The application should reflect links to previous work in this domain.

 

FELLOWSHIP DETAILS

Our UnifyID AI Fellows will be initially allocated to a well-defined project matched with their area of interest and expertise and also mapped to a fellowship mentor. The fellows are then presented with a week’s time to collaborate with the mentor and come up with an 11-week timeline roughly detailing the pathway that they plan to take to achieve the project end-goals.

During the fellowship, the fellows are expected to convene in-person and present weekly updates every Thursday evening in our office located in SoMa, San Francisco. In exceptional cases, individuals will be allowed to present via video chat. Absentees in these update-presentation sessions for two consecutive weeks will result in an automatic ejection from the fellowship.

All selected fellows will be awarded:

  1. Life-long designation as a UnifyID AI Fellow.
  2. A fellowship stipend.
  3. Access to state-of-the-art GPU hardware and $360,000 in Microsoft Azure cloud service credits.
  4. Access to our office space in SoMa.
  5. Prepaid Clipper card to help with commuting to/from the office.
  6. A chance to collaborate and publish with top-tier security experts from MIT, Stanford, CMU, Berkeley, Dartmouth, etc.
  7. Conference registration fees for all of the publications that emanate from the fellowship.
  8. Travel expenses for one flagship top-tier conference in case fellow’s work gets accepted as a publication.
  9. A citation and certificate commemorating your achievement.
  10. Exclusive UnifyID Fellow swag.
  11. A chance to present at the UnifyID Tech-expo Day in May 2017.

 

DELIVERABLES

  1. A short paper describing the project.
  2. A detailed, well-commented code submission on either ai-on.org or http://www.gitxiv.com (in case you have an arxiv worthy submission).
  3. A one-page blog post providing a less technical version of the project details. ($ ipython nbconvert–to markdown notebook.ipynb–stdout will do!)
  4. A final presentation in .ppt or .pdf format during the UnifyID Tech-expo Day.

We also expect that with regard to some of the projects, we may be able to munge certain openly available datasets and upload with associated open problems on ai-on.org if the fellow is limited by the timeline of the fellowship.

 

REQUIREMENTS

We welcome applications from practitioners, tech-enthusiasts as well as students spanning both the undergraduate and graduate levels, preferably from the SF bay area. 

 

Tracks Languages Libraries/Platforms/Frameworks
Machine Learning Python, Lua, Julia, R, Scala, Java Scikit-learn, Torch/Autograd, Caffe, Keras with Theano/TensorFlow, Chainer
Mobile Development Swift, Objective C, Java Core Location, Core Motion, Core Bluetooth, DeepLearningKit,Accelerate: BNNS, CoreAudio/AudioKit
Security C, C++, JavaScript AES, RSA, ECDSA, PKI, Functional Encryption, Enclaves (SGX)
UX/UI Development (Portfolio Review)
Tech Journalism (Portfolio Review)

Please apply here with the following:

  1. Resume
  2. A personal statement (no longer than 250 words) explaining what you expect to achieve with this fellowship.
  3. A 5-slide presentation (ppt or pdf) detailing your most cherished accomplishment in the area you are applying to (with links to publication(s), GitHub code-base, live-project link, etc.).

 

UnifyID AI Fellowship

San Francisco, CA

Program Weekend Dates: February 23 – May 18, 2016

Application due date: January 31, 2017, 11:59 PM (PDT)

Global Security Survey Across 700+ Organizations

Posted on by Grace Chang

In this brave new world of emerging protectionism and continued globalization, privacy and security seem at odds. In our market survey across 730 individuals and a similar count of organizations, security concerns ranked 10 very important (0 not at all) on startlingly 50% of those surveyed.

Scale of Security Concern
UnifyID survey question on security (0 not at all concerned to 10 very important).

UnifyID, a service that authenticates you based on unique factors like the way you walk, type, and sit is a revolutionary new identity platform for seamless security. Understanding the need for data privacy and ownership, product ease of use, and multifactor security, UnifyID has crafted a solution to address the pain of remembering passwords for authorized access in online and offline use cases.

In a deeper dive across 70 organizations and in 40 hours of interviews, we discovered that people care a lot about easier access at work but also at home. “It would be great if you can take stuff off my plate: several cell phones for different countries, computers, iPads, smart software in my car and home that can all actually talk to each other so that I don’t use the same password or long passwords every time I do a software update–this would save me several days every year I take to manage the access to these independent tools,” says Marco, an enterprise software COO.

Global Security Interest - Interviewed
70 organizations and 40 hours of interviews across various backgrounds.

In another interview with John, an undergraduate aerospace engineer, “Personally, I’m just excited to make new technology a part of my life. UnifyID complements my life with easier access to all of the sites I visit and makes my life easier and exciting to see the technology of the future as part of my life. Other than protecting my identity, it’s really cool to use this technology to make a big difference in people’s lives.” 

These interviews were a special treat to meet people from different cultures, backgrounds, and walks of life. We had an incredibly unique chance to hear more on what specifically about security is most important to our users’ day-to-day lives. “As a small company, you have the opportunity to touch more people than Coca-Cola! A guy living in Istanbul is really interested in what you’re doing right now, 10k kilometers away. I’m sure more than 100k people are very excited about what 6 people in San Francisco are doing,” remarked a manager at Coca-Cola at the end of our call.

Our challenge is unique in that we’re not just addressing large corporations but real people including our friends and family. Though the political tides may be changing, taking back your rights to security and privacy is a paramount task we don’t take lightly. If you’d like to join us in this journey to taking down passwords, please sign up for beta or feel free to drop us a note anytime.

Survey Demographics

Survey Demographics: Age

Survey Demographics: Gender

Survey Demographics: Ethnicity

Survey Demographics: Education

Imagine: 1-Click Login Across 500 Websites

Posted on by Grace Chang

Now, imagine seamless authentication everywhere. Software so powerful that by the sensors you already have on your phone, wearables, devices at home or the office, knows it’s you. No more 6-digit pin, string of upper and lowercase letters and numbers to signify that it is really you making a purchase, logging in, or entering a key swipe. Anywhere online or offline where you need to identify yourself, UnifyID promises that based on your everyday actions from factors like how you sit, walk, and type (i.e. passive factors also known as implicit authentication in academia), your “you-ness” can be determined with 99.999% accuracy. At times when the machine learning algorithms are unsure, an active challenge will be triggered on your nearest phone or device (e.g. fingerprint verification, among a dozen others in development).

Active Challenge
The UnifyID iOS active challenge is triggered when the machine learning algorithm requires additional verification to learn that it is really you.

UnifyID has been called the holy grail of authentication because the degree of security and sophistication of its machine learning efforts are unparalleled and the convenience and focus on usability makes trying the product unbelievably easy.

Between now and then, we’re in the stage of private beta–ensuring that the flows are easy and work as expected. UnifyID launched out of stealth at TechCrunch Disrupt in September. The initial sign on, logging out and logging back into sites has gone through more than 25 iterations in a few weeks (thanks to the onsite testers!). We’re ready to move forward to a remote private beta and test outside the bounds of our four-walls.

Join us on this journey to disrupt passwords. While “The Oracle” is still under development (our machine learning algorithms), we are moving full-forward on making sure that at this stage, the UnifyID user flows are easy for everyone to use, many times, everyday, across all sites.

***

Sign up for the UnifyID Private Beta: https://unify.id, click “Apply for Private Beta,” enter “Imagination” and why you are interested in participating in the beta in the secret handshake field.

UnifyID Anoints 16 Distinguished Scientists for the AI Fellowship

Posted on by Grace Chang

Fast Growing Startup Uses Machine Learning to Solve Passwordless Authentication

Today, UnifyID, a service that can authenticate you based on unique factors like the way you walk, type, and sit, announced the final 16 fellows selected for its inaugural Artificial Intelligence Fellowship for the Fall of 2016. Each of the fellows have shown exemplary leadership and curiosity in making a meaningful difference in our society and clearly has an aptitude for making sweeping changes in this rapidly growing area of AI.

Of the company’s recent launch and success at TechCrunch Disrupt, claiming SF Battlefield Runner-Up (2nd in 1000 applicants worldwide), UnifyID CEO John Whaley said, “We were indeed overwhelmed by the amazing response to our first edition of the AI Fellowship and the sheer quality of applicants we received. We also take immense pride in the fact that more than 40% of our chosen cohort will be women, which further reinforces our commitment as one of the original 33 signees of the U.S. White House Tech Inclusion Pledge.”

The final 16 fellows hail from Israel, Paris, Kyoto, Bangalore, and cities across the U.S. with Ph.D., M.S., M.B.A., and B.S. degrees from MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, Columbia, NYU-CIMS, UCLA, Wharton, among other top institutions.

  • Aidan Clark triple major in Math, Classical Languages and CS at UC Berkeley
  • Anna Venancio-Marques Data Scientist in Residence, PhD École normale supérieure
  • Arik Sosman Software Engineer at BitGo, 2x Apple WWDC scholar, CeBIT speaker

  • Baiyu Chen Convolutional Neural Network Researcher, Masters in CS at UC Berkeley

  • Fuxiao Xin Lead Machine Learning Scientist at GE Global Research, PhD Bioinformatics

  • Kathy Sohrabi VP Engineering, IoT and sensors, MBA at Wharton, PhD EE at UCLA

  • Kazu Komoto Chief Robotics Engineer, CNET Writer, Masters in ME at Kyoto University

  • Laura Florescu Co-authored Asymptopia, Mathematical Reviewer, PhD CS at NYU

  • Lorraine Lin Managing Director, MFE Berkeley, PhD Oxford, Masters Design Harvard
  • Morgan Lai AI Scientist, MIT Media Lab, Co-founder/CTO, M.Eng. CS at MIT

  • Pushpa Raghani Post Doc Researcher at Stanford and IBM, PhD Physics at JNCASR

  • Raul Puri Machine Learning Development at Berkeley, BS EE/CS/Bioeng at Berkeley
  • Sara Hooker Data Scientist, Founder non-profit, educational access in rural Africa

  • Siraj Raval Data Scientist, the Bill Nye of Computer Science on YouTube

  • Wentao Wang Senior New Tech Integration Engineer at Tesla, PhD ME at MIT

  • Will Grathwohl Computer Vision Specialist, Founder/Chief Scientist, BS CSAIL at MIT

 

This highly selective, cross-disciplinary program covers the following areas:

  • Deep Learning
  • Signal Processing
  • Optimization Theory
  • Sensor Technology
  • Mobile Development
  • Statistical Machine Learning
  • Security and Identity
  • Human Behavior

Our UnifyID AI Fellows will get to choose from one of 16 well-defined projects in the broad area of applied artificial intelligence in the context of solving the problem of seamless personal authentication. The Fellows will be led by our esteemed Fellowship Advisors, renown experts in machine learning and PhDs from CMU, Stanford, and University of Vienna, Austria.

Please welcome our incoming class! ✨

 

Read the original UnifyID AI Fellowship Announcement:

https://unify.id/2016/10/10/announcing-the-unifyid-ai-fellowship/

 

Initial Release:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/unifyid/prweb13804371.htm#!

Announcing the UnifyID AI Fellowship

Posted on by Grace Chang

Today, we would like to announce the UnifyID AI Fellowship program for Fall 2016. The fellowship runs for six weeks, beginning October 28, 2016 through to December 4, 2016. This selective, cross-disciplinary program covers the following areas:

  • Deep Learning
  • Signal Processing
  • Optimization Theory
  • Sensor Technology
  • Mobile Development
  • Statistical Machine Learning
  • Security and Identity
  • Human Behavior

Our UnifyID AI Fellows will get to choose from one of 16 well-defined projects in the broad area of applied artificial intelligence in the context of solving the problem of seamless personal authentication.

All selected fellows will be awarded:

  1. A fellowship stipend.
  2. Access to state-of-the-art GPU hardware and $360,000 in Microsoft Azure cloud service credits.
  3. Weekend access to our office space in SoMa, as well as as-needed access on weekdays.
  4. Prepaid Clipper card to help with commuting to/from the office.
  5. Chance to collaborate and publish with top-tier security experts from MIT, Stanford, CMU, Berkeley, Dartmouth, etc.
  6. A citation, certificate, and plaque commemorating your achievement.
  7. Exclusive UnifyID Fellow signature bags and sweatshirts for the Fall 2016 inaugural class.
  8. A chance to present at the UnifyID Tech-expo Day in December 2016.

We expect the work from your Fellowship to result in either a publication (with fully open-sourced code and data repository on GitHub for reproducible research) or a patent filing.

 

REQUIREMENTS

We welcome applications from practitioners, hackers, tech-enthusiasts as well as students in full-time accredited academic programs both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, preferably from the SF bay area. An ideal candidate has both math and coding chops, but more importantly, this individual is an engineer, signal-processor, hacker, and self-proclaimed guru who is comfortable with crafting, hacking, implementing, re-implementing, and breaking Machine Learning algorithms deep, shallow or otherwise.

 Tracks Machine Learning Mobile Dev.
Languages Python, Lua, Julia, R, Scala, Java Swift, Objective C, Java
Libraries/Platforms/Frameworks Scikit-learn, Torch/Autograd, Caffe, Keras with Theano/TensorFlow, Chainer Core Location, Core Motion, Core Bluetooth, DeepLearningKit, Accelerate: BNNS, CoreAudio/AudioKit
OS Ubuntu, OS X, RHEL / CentOS / Fedora, iOS, Android

Please apply here and include in the open form field, a personal statement (no longer than 250 words) explaining what you expect to achieve with this fellowship along with your favorite moment in the sun (publication, GitHub code-base, live-project link).

 

UnifyID AI Fellowship

San Francisco, CA

Program Weekend Dates: October 28 – December 4, 2016

Application due date: October 17, 2016, 11:59 PM (PDT)

UnifyID Disrupts Disrupt!

Posted on by Grace Chang

We’ve never been one to shy away from making our own path, and if we hear that it’s never been done that way before, we’re eager to try. Courage is in our DNA and gives us the freedom to pursue challenge without inhibitions. We’re humbled to be named TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield Runner-Up as we launch out of stealth, but we’re even more excited to eliminate passwords forever.

Many thanks to our supporters. We have read every tweet, Facebook post, article, article comment, and secret handshake 🙂

Photo by Oren Haskins

And for those who would like to take this disruptive journey behind Disrupt, sign up for our private beta today at Unify.ID (“Apply for Private Beta” with PTCD and why you’d like to enlist).

Photo by Oren Haskins

We encourage everyone to spread the good word on UnifyID.

Photo by Oren Haskins

We are actively hiring and based in SoMa, San Francisco.

Photo by Oren Haskins

We recognize the importance of diversity in the workplace and actively celebrate what makes each individual unique.

Photo by Oren Haskins

We’re on a mission to change the world and build a revolutionary identity platform based on implicit authentication to make your security seamless.