FIND Technologies' Crowdsourced Contest offers $45,000 for New Algorithm
FIND Technologies has announced that they will award $45,000 to the individual who can produce an algorithm that can assign labels of three different substances to 1500 test samples. The current system produces data of 79% accuracy so the winner’s design must must identify data that is at least 95% correct.
FIND Technologies is a Canadian company that prides itself in developing sensor technology that can measure electromagnetic signatures of materials. The sensors are inexpensive instruments that can detect passive electromagnetic emission from all matter. Its applications include, biomedical, homeland security, engineering, and geological.
The contest is supported by FIND’s strategic partners, Biomedical Commercialization Canada who decided to crowdsource the development for a real time, automatic identification of materials which are essential to equip sensors with an intelligent software. This software would then be able to identify various “fingerprints” in the recordings by uniquely identifying substances found in the materials. The company are searching for the best and highest quality algorithm so they launched this contest through the TunedIT platform. The company chose TunedIT because it is connected to hi-tech companies and large world-wide communities of computer scientists. They are also connected to algorithm designers which will be able to approach the task in numerous methods and ideas.
In our laboratory we now rely on pattern recognition of images generated from the signals acquired from the sensor. For example, different patterns are generated from small amounts of chemicals at virtually any distance from the sensor and even when concealed: from small discrete areas of the human body; from body organs in different stages of activity; from abnormal areas of skin; from tiny amounts of cultured cells, normal or diseased; from metal that is under stress; from metal salts mixed in with soil or sand; from aqueous solutions of specific chemicals.
Dr. Frank LaBella PhD; founder of FIND
The competition will lastt for 6 months (no later than November 30th 2011) or until a suitable algorithm is found. If you have the necessary knowledge and skills to enter then you can visit the task page. However it is important that fist read the terms of participation (which is only visible to registered users) to determine if you are eligible.
