8th Annual LDV Vision Summit 2022

March 23, 2022, 11:00 - 3:00 PM ET
Virtual Event

Our 8th annual premier global gathering in visual tech goes online to bring to you a mini-Summit that showcases the cutting edge in computer vision, machine learning and AI solutions to improve the world we live in. Join us for this free event from the comfort of your couch.

22 expert speakers, 3 fireside chats, 9 lightning keynotes & 2 panels

Read our event recap »
See the recordings »

Speakers

Topics

We will discuss computer vision, computational imaging, machine learning and visual technology relating to the following sectors:
- Healthcare & Medicine
- Metaverse, Gaming, Media, & Entertainment
- Advanced microscopy, chemistry and biology
- Internet of Eyes = Miniaturization of sensors & edge computing
- Mobility
- Climate
- Space

Who should attend?

» Computer Vision, Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence experts and professionals
» Media and brand executives interested in boosting revenue by leveraging new imaging and video products and technologies
» Investors: Visual technologies & businesses deliver tremendous upside - don't miss the next Instagram, Youtube, Oculus, Snapchat... 
» Technology executives evaluating companies for partnerships & acquisitions
» Creatives: Photographers, Videographers and anyone creating content

Schedule

11:00AM ET
Keynote: Insights from a Decade of LDV Capital Success Investing in Teams Building Businesses Powered by Visual Technologies

LDV Horizontal Investment Thesis: The majority of data our brains analyze is visual. Analyzing visual data is critical to the success of artificial intelligence for businesses and society. LDV Capital leverages unparalleled domain expertise to invest very early (pre-incorporation, pre-seed & seed) in people building deep tech-powered businesses that deploy state of the art computer vision, machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyze visual data. What Will The Next 10 Years Deliver?
- Evan Nisselson, General Partner at LDV Capital

11:15AM ET
Fireside Chat: Investing In People Who Harness the Power of Cells and Visual Tech to Unlock Opportunity

Julia Moore is managing partner and co-founder of Breakout Ventures, an early-stage fund investing in companies harnessing the power of cells to build solutions in human health and sustainability.  She and her team have spent the last decade supporting science-driven companies moving with urgency. In this fireside chat with LDV’s Abby Hunter-Syed, Julia will discuss her career investing in, analyzing and operating science-driven companies. They will discuss the lessons learned from her career journey and the trends she sees at the intersection of biology and technology that will shape the world over the next 10 years.
- Julia Moore, Managing Partner at Breakout Ventures

11:50AM ET
Keynote: The First Real-Time Mental Health Tracker Leveraging Video, Audio, Bio Signals and Environmental Data

Real-time tracking is the future of mental health. Research shows that mental health is an imperative part of our well-being. Millions of people across the world are suffering from mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. Yet, there has been no reliable method to objectively track mental health. Until now. Earkick is the first real-time, data-driven mental health tracker that uses a multi-modal AI approach to make tracking your mental wellbeing as easy as tracking the weather. Serial entrepreneur & Co-Founder Herbert Bay will discuss how Earkick is building their deep tech artificial intelligence platform to proactively measure mental health.
- Herbert Bay, Co-Founder & CEO at Earkick

11:55AM ET
Keynote: Computer Vision-Based Collision Avoidance System (ADAS) For Bikes and E-Bikes

Riding bikes and especially e-bikes in traffic can be harrowing even for the most avid cyclist. Studies show that it is the #1 barrier to further ebike adoption. Boosted by the pandemic, electric bikes saw an impressive 240% growth in the twelve months ending in July 2021, and have been out-selling electric cars by more than 2-to-1. However, cycling is still the most dangerous mode of transportation per mile and 78% of fatal incidents happen in cities.  Streetlogic will enhance safety for E-bike riders with a surround-view camera that can predict front, side and rear collisions and notify riders in order to prevent accidents. They realized that they could use computer vision techniques from the self-driving car industry to make ebiking orders of magnitude safer and get 10x more people on ebikes.
- Jonathan Denby, Founder & CEO at Streetlogic

12:00PM ET
Keynote: The Convergence of AI and Scientific Computing is a Revolution in the Making

Partial differential equations are the foundation for most scientific simulations. At Caltech, Anima Anandkumar and her team developed the Fourier Neural Operator (FNO), a framework that allows AI to learn and solve an entire family of partial differential equations, rather than a single instance. It’s the first machine learning method to successfully model turbulent flows with zero-shot super-resolution — meaning, they do not need high-resolution training data, which are necessary for standard neural networks. FNO-based machine learning greatly reduces the costs of obtaining information for AI models, improves their accuracy and speeds up inference. Anima will discuss how, at NVIDIA, they have leveraged FNOs to offer a 100,000x speedup over numerical methods and, as one application, can provide unprecedented fine-scale resolution for weather prediction models. By accurately simulating and predicting extreme weather events, the AI models can allow planning to mitigate the effects of such disasters.
- Anima Anandkumar, Director of ML research at NVIDIA and Bren Professor at Caltech

12:10PM ET
Panel: Cutting Edge Visual Tech is Driving the Next Frontier in Space

For a multitude of reasons, the next age of space exploration is underway. Whether it is a telescope sent 1M miles away to see into the universe or satellites monitoring activity on Earth; a robot exploring another planet or space tours, the next 5-10 years of advancement in space will require visual technologies. In this panel, experts will discuss where and why they believe visual data will be central to space exploration, monitoring, mining, manufacturing and more.

Moderator:
- Peter Stern, CEO at Voyant Photonics & Venture Partner at LDV Capital
Panelists:
- Tej Bhatia, Chief Revenue Officer at Axiom Space
- Stefanie Milam, Deputy Project Scientist at NASA, James Webb Space Telescope
- Kurt Eberly, Director of Space Launches at Northrop Grumman

12:45PM ET
Keynote: Validating Products in <60 Seconds via Computer Vision & Machine Learning

Using burner pages to measure user interest is a proven method used by the world's most successful companies. Today it takes hours, if not days and weeks, to generate burner pages. But with the help of AI and machine learning, serial entrepreneur Avi Muchnik’s goal is to automatically optimize web page conversion performance, with minimal human management. He co-founded Aviary which he sold to Adobe, then he became Chief Product Officer at Shapeways and then Chief Product Officer at Shutterstock. In this keynote, Avi will discuss how he is building a future where everyone sees web pages uniquely personalized to them.
- Avi Muchnick, Founder & CEO at BurnerPage

12:55PM ET
Keynote: Optics and AI co-designed to deliver DSLR Image Quality on Smartphones and Small Devices

Cameras design basics have not changed in the past 200 years. Modern advanced compute platforms that can execute real-time Neural Networks and computational photography algorithms enable dramatic changes in the architecture of the camera.  Removing many mechanical constraints by using a unique optical design that when coupled with smart AI enable Glass to build camera modules with huge CMOS sensors while keeping the critical dimensions small enough to fit in a smartphone.  After selling LinX Imaging to Apple, leading Apple’s multi-camera technology with features like Portrait Mode, Depth Mapping, Image Fusion, and Portrait Lighting, Co-Founder & CEO Ziv Attar is now building Glass Imaging to redesign the optical system from the ground up to be tailor-made for smartphones and small devices. Attar will showcase Glass’s new, proprietary design of camera systems that collect more than 10x more light than traditional designs. Their state-of-the-art AI algorithms seamlessly enhance the raw images produced by their optics and sensors leading to radically improved image quality on smartphones. Glass Imaging is the latest addition to our LDV portfolio. Read more details in Peter Stern’s article.
- Ziv Attar, Co-Founder & CEO at Glass Imaging.

1:00PM ET
Fireside Chat: How to Turn Deep Technological Innovations into Unicorn Businesses that Improve Humanity 

Martín Varsavsky is an extremely successful serial entrepreneur, professor and investor who has founded 8 companies (3 with unicorn status) in the US and Europe in the last 30 years. Today, he is focused on revolutionizing fertility as the founder and CEO of Overture Life, an automated embryology company; as well as the Founder and Chairman of Prelude/Inception Fertility, the largest chain of fertility clinics in the US. He is passionate about autonomous driving as CEO of Goggo Network. He is also Chairman of Gameto. He invests via his family office Jazzya, VAS Ventures and MVB Fund. We are thrilled to co-invest with Martin in Synthesia’s LDV led seed financing. Martin will speak with LDV Capital General Partner, Evan Nisselson, about his experiences turning technological innovations into billion-dollar companies that can have a significant impact on humanity and build significant value. Check out this pre-summit interview teaser into the great content we will be covering.
- Martin Varsavsky, Chairman at Prelude Fertility & Gameto; CEO at Overture & Goggo Network

1:30PM ET
Keynote: Past and Future of Single-Photon Based Perception

Single-photon sensitive sensors such as Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPADs) or Quanta Image Sensors (QIS) are becoming more and more commoditized. This trend is driven by applications that require imaging in dark conditions or imaging with ultrahigh time resolution such as fluorescence lifetime microscopy and LiDAR. The capability of single-photon sensors to capture the smallest unit of light results in great versatility, which naturally makes these sensors useful for a wider range of use cases. The more widespread adoption of these sensors will be rooted in hardware improvements, but also, and perhaps to an even larger degree, in smart processing algorithms. In his keynote, Sebastian will take a look at the past evolution of such single-photon based perception and share an outlook into the future.
- Sebastian Bauer, Co-Founder & CEO at Ubicept

1:35PM ET
Keynote: Combining LiDAR, Satellite Imaging, Machine Learning and Airborne Observations to Measure & Validate Carbon Credits Impact in Forests

With the escalating impact of climate change today it has become increasingly obvious that emissions reduction is simply not enough. We need to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Forests are a proven, scalable and cost-effective means of drawing down atmospheric carbon. Pachama is focused on leveraging data, artificial intelligence, and automation to protect ecosystems, restore forests, and improve carbon markets. They believe that putting better data in the hands of people can create a healthy, living planet.
- Diego Saez Gil, Co-Founder & CEO at Pachama

1:45PM ET
Panel: Investing Trends in Businesses Powered by Visual Technologies

Zoom, Roblox and Pinterest are examples of IPOs that are powered by visual technologies. These successes are just the tip of the iceberg. Our panel will explore trends in visual technologies across all business sectors and society. Where are the next visual technology investment opportunities?

Moderator:
- Christine Hall, Reporter at TechCrunch
Panelists:
- Adrian Fenty, Managing General Partner at MAC Venture Capital
- Wendy Xiao Schadeck, Partner at Northzone. Check out our interview with Wendy.
- Amy Kruse, General Partner at Prime Movers Lab. Check out our interview with Amy.

2:15PM ET
Keynote: Geometric Deep Learning as a Portal to Metaverse
Deep learning approaches made a tremendous impact on traditional computer vision tasks in terms of accuracy, efficiency, and scalability. What if we were to add another dimension to these approaches, and go beyond data distributions towards recreating digital worlds? Geometric deep learning, especially for shape representations and generative models, has been blooming to carry us to novel 3D capture and generation methods. In her keynote, Dr. Demir will discuss how her work on geometric deep learning was seeded with traditional generative models, and how she is now applying it at Intel Studios for the future of AR/VR productions. She will dive into how Intel Studios is leveraging the largest volumetric capture stage in the world to improve deep learning approaches for capture, reconstruction, and creative processes with 270 GB/sec of 3D data. How will this impact the future of content creation as we step into the metaverse?
- Ilke Demir, Senior Staff Research Scientist at Intel

2:20PM ET
Fireside Chat: How to Make Moonshots into Moon Landings & Other Tales in Deep Tech Entrepreneurism 

Mary Lou Jepsen is an impressive Serial Entrepreneur recognized by Time Magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the world. With a Ph.D. in Optical Physics, Mary Lou has built OpenWater with the objective of seeing deep into the human body, in high-res 3D. She has delivered billions of dollars of high-tech products and is leading OpenWater to revolutionize neural imaging and save lives. Previously she was an engineering executive at Facebook, Oculus, Google[x] and Intel as well as a founder of 4 startups including One Laptop per Child where she was CTO, chief architect and delivered to mass production the $100 laptop.  Her startup CEO experience includes the world’s only fabless display screen company which was based in Taipei. She has been a professor at MIT and is an inventor on over 100 published or issued patents in the last 5 years alone. Mary Lou will speak with LDV Capital General Partner, Evan Nisselson, about her journey in deep tech entrepreneurism and share her secrets on taking moonshot projects and making them moonlandings. Read our pre-summit interview teaser to learn more.
- Mary Lou Jepsen, Founder & CEO at Openwater

2:55PM ET
Closing: Thank you and closing remarks