Thursday, January 12, 2012

12 to watch in 2012: Alexander Levy

App inventor Alex Levy is one of the Star's 12 people to watch in 2012.
App inventor Alex Levy is one of the Star's 12 people to watch in 2012.
Lucas Oleniuk/Toronto Star
Vanessa Lu Business Reporter
Alexander Levy never imagined he’d be running a mobile app company.
In 2009 he was finishing up his political science degree at the University of Toronto and was planning to go to law school when he took a part-time research assistant job at the Technologies for Aging Gracefully Lab.
That led him to a chance encounter with Bill Scott, a stroke survivor who suffered from aphasia, where words are on the tip of his tongue, but the person just can’t get them out.
Scott wandered into the lab with a huge binder of photos with words that he used to communicate, along with a bulky machine, wanting to find a better way.
That prompted Levy, with the help of others including his company’s co-founder, Aakash Sahnei, to develop their MyVoice app, which readies a list of specific words based on the GPS location of a smartphone.....Next

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