ECE startup enhances video communication

6/10/2013 Gabrielle Irvin, ECE ILLINOIS

ECE ILLINOIS faculty and alumni are working to revolutionize video communication and collaboration via Personify, a company founded in 2009 that has since launched Personify Live.

Written by Gabrielle Irvin, ECE ILLINOIS

ECE ILLINOIS faculty members Sanjay Jeram Patel, Minh N Do, and Wen-mei Hwu and alumni Dennis Lin (MSCompE '04, PhD '11) and Quang Nguyen (MSECE '09) are working to revolutionize video communication and collaboration via Personify, a company founded in 2009 that has since launched Personify Live, a product that immerses users in a shared space, adding a new dimension to video conferencing, collaboration, and presentations.

Personify Live superimposes a video image of Sanjay Patel  onto the PC desktop.
Personify Live superimposes a video image of Sanjay Patel onto the PC desktop.


Personify, formerly Nuvixa, creates products that enhance the way people communicate via video for online meetings, on-line training and education, desktop telepresence, and video chat.

“Video calling is about creating a sense of connectedness with the other participants,” said Sanjay Patel, ECE professor and Personify CEO. “Putting everyone into a common environment along with the content they are sharing significantly improves the online experience.”  

Personify technology operates with new sensor technologies, such as the Microsoft Kinect for Windows Sensor. Personify uses the extra information from the sensor, or depth, to create a computational video platform that brings new features to video communication that would otherwise be difficult with traditional imaging sensors, such as real-time user segmentation –identifying the human from the physical environment and then cutting the human out of the scene. Personify’s technology is able to pull the video image of the user from their physical environment and superimpose them onto the PC desktop, allowing the user to interact with their content and thus engage their audience.

Personify Chat immerses users into a shared space.
Personify Chat immerses users into a shared space.


The company plans to launch a new product, Personify Chat, in the near future. Personify Chat is a video calling application for the desktop.  Personify Chat builds on the Intel Perceptual Computing Platform to make visual communication more natural and engaging. Personify Chat also eliminates the visibility of physical backgrounds so that users can be immersed in a shared space, like a desktop. The application allows users to share browser windows and view the same content – a simple and effective way to collaborate.

“We are seeing great potential for the company right now,” Patel said. “We are getting a lot of interest from large enterprises for our product, along with partnership opportunities from larger vendors in the video communication space. This is the future of how people will communication with video.”


Share this story

This story was published June 10, 2013.