MIT research scientist brings deep knowledge of cutting-edge Terahertz imaging technology to Ripcord’s growing roster of industry heavyweights
HAYWARD, Calif. – June 11 , 2019 – Ripcord, the world’s first robotic digitization company dedicated to creating a truly paperless world, today announced the appointment of Barmak Heshmat, former research scientist at MIT, to its advisory board. He joins an already stellar roster, which includes Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, former NASA CTO, Chris Kemp and Oracle co-founder, Bruce Scott. The appointment promises to advance the company’s Canopy software and robotic systems beyond the conventional limitations of optics through Heshmat’s groundbreaking work in Terahertz imaging technology.
The Terahertz imaging technology, pioneered by Heshmat at the MIT Media Lab, is capable of time-gated spectroscopic imaging that allows for content extraction through layered structures. Today, that means this technology can read through 9-20 pages of a closed book using Terahertz waves. But for the future, it unlocks the possibility of reading entire boxes of paper without removing the lid. As the technology is integrated with Ripcord’s existing OCR (optical character recognition) capabilities and AI powered entity extraction, the combination of technologies will underpin Ripcord’s next big step forward, enabling Ripcord to transition from being a leader in the content management industry to becoming the industry’s ultimate disruptor.
Currently, Heshmat serves as the founder and CEO of BRELYON, a stealth startup. Formerly a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Barmak is a pioneer in Terahertz technology that scans and reads pages through closed books with invisible radiation. Heshmat’s past work has disrupted the world of imaging all the way from fundamentals in design of optics to introduction to new applications such as batch scanning.
“I’m honored to join Ripcord’s advisory board to help leverage lessons learned in THz imaging and time-of-flight imaging that can help Ripcord radically accelerate data capture from paper documents,” said Barmak Heshmat, founder and CEO of BRELYON. “Ripcord is an innovative and forward-thinking company that combines data that we can uncover through cutting-edge non-optical imaging with machine learning and artificial intelligence to produce insights that previously could not have been imagined. It’s exciting to think about the possibilities this creates as we transition from physical to digital.”
“Barmak’s help in commercializing this approach will make Ripcord’s mission of taking the entire world paperless a reality,” said Alex Fielding, founder and iCEO, Ripcord. “It’s not everyday that you meet a person as brilliant and curious as Barmak, much less have the opportunity to learn from him and work alongside him to commercialize and scale a technology approach that can help us create a paperless future. This advancement in imaging is the technological equivalent of going from an X-Ray to a high resolution MRI.”
Co-founded by former Apple and NASA employees, Ripcord enables companies to digitize paper records and connect those records to existing enterprise systems. The company provides an alternative to outdated records management systems that are overly complex, require expensive customization and take years to effectively implement.
Ripcord’s robotics technology reduces digitization costs to a fraction of the marketplace’s legacy options by achieving higher quality results at 10 times the speed. Heshmat’s appointment will continue to shake up the market while elevating industry standards for data digitization and records management.
The Ripcord board of directors includes Andy Wheeler, a general partner at GV; Jeb Miller, a general manager of Icon Ventures; Wen Hsieh, a partner at KPCB; Peter Hebert, a board observer and co-founder and managing partner of Lux Capital; and Patrick Dennis, Ripcord chairman and president and CEO of Aspect Software.
To learn more, please contact [email protected] for more details or visit ripcord.com.
By Petr Kramerius, Regional Manager at Infosource Following their decision to integrate their businesses last year, Ricoh and Toshiba have finalized the establishment of a joint venture to be known...