ECE alumni grab international headlines with Nymi

Sept. 11, 2013

ECE alumni Karl Martin and Foteini Agrafioti are garnering international headlines with today’s release of their biometric wristband, Nymi.

Nymi launched to much fanfare from The New York Times, Popular Science, TechCrunch, CNET, the U.K.’s Daily Mail, and many others.

Nymi is the world’s first wearable authentication device that uses your heartbeat to unlock your identity. The new device is a bracelet embedded with an electrocardiogram (ECG) sensor that recognizes the unique and unchanging electronic signal of your heart. The ECG sensor identifies the wearer “not just their heart rate, but the actual shape of their heartbeat,” Agrafioti explained to Business Review Canada.

Once it’s recognized you, the Nymi communicates with all your registered devices to log you in, eliminating the need for passwords and PINs. It keeps you logged in until you remove the wristband.

“You put it on. It knows it’s you. It communicates that identity securely to everything around you,” Martin told The New York Times.

Martin and Agrafioti founded thier company, Bionym, in 2011. The team participated in the inaugural 2012-13 cohort of University of Toronto’s Creative Destruction Lab, and received support from MaRS Discovery District.

Nymi is currently available for preorder, with shipments beginning in early 2014.

More information:
Marit Mitchell
Senior Communications Officer
The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
416-978-7997; marit.mitchell@utoronto.ca