WEST LAFAYETTE, − Purdue Ventures has invested in Ixana, a wearable smart devices company that communicates with touch.
According to Ixana's website, the fact that human-computer interaction (HCI) is primarily done by looking at a six inch smart phone screen has "bothered Ixana's co-founders for more than a decade."
"They have worked independently as well as together to make HCI faster, more effective, and more efficient," the Ixana website states. "Ixana's founder and CTO, Shreyas, had the insight that distributed computing could transform HCI and high communication energy is the bottleneck to it. Realizing this, Shreyas and his research team invented Wi-R, an orders of magnitude energy-efficient and secure communication with transformative impact on HCI."
According to a release from the univeristy, Purdue Ventures' investment is part of a larger $3 million seed funding round for Ixana. Other companies that are a part of this backing include EvoNexus, Hack VC, Paradigm Shift Capital, Samsung Next and Uncorrelated Ventures.
The technology for the Wi-R silicon ship is based on "patented, published, peer-reviewed research" conducted by Shreyas Sen, the Elmore Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Purdue University’s Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of Purdue’s Center for Internet of Bodies, according to the release.