SAN DIEGO, June 19, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Emotient, the leading provider of facial expression analysis software, today announced that Stephen Ritter joined the company as Senior Vice President of Product Development. Stephen brings extensive engineering management experience from successful start-ups and larger enterprises, including Cypher Genomics, Websense and McAfee, an Intel company.
“Steve is a proven technology leader who has demonstrated success in transforming cutting edge technology into highly successful commercial products,” said Ken Denman, President and CEO, Emotient. “We will rely on his expertise as we continue to drive our innovative, emotion-aware software into the healthcare and retail markets, through a cloud-based platform.”
“Emotient is at the forefront of a massive trend in emotion-aware computing,” said Ritter. “Emotient’s founding team is spearheading the development of proprietary technology that sets the industry standard for accuracy and real-time delivery of facial expression data and analysis. I look forward to leading the commercial delivery of new emotion analytics products for retail and healthcare based on our state-of-the-art technology.”
Most recently, Stephen served as CTO at Cypher Genomics, a leading genome informatics company. Previously, he was Vice President, Engineering for Websense, where he led a global team in the development of the market leading web security product, TRITON Web Security Gateway. Prior to WebSense he served as senior director of engineering at McAfee, now an Intel company, where he developed one of the most advanced and scalable security management software systems in the industry.
Ritter began his career as an accomplished software developer/architect and currently holds six patents in the area of information security. He holds a B.S. in Cognitive Science from UC San Diego.
About Emotient – Emotion Recognition Technology ( www.emotient.com ) Emotient, Inc., is the leading authority in facial expression analysis. Emotient’s software translates facial expressions into actionable information, thereby enabling companies to develop emotion-aware technologies and to create new levels of customer engagement, research, and analysis. Emotient’s facial expression technology is currently available to Global 2000 companies within the retail, healthcare and consumer packaged goods industries.
Emotient was founded by a team of six Ph.D.s from the University of California, San Diego, who are the foremost experts in applying machine learning, computer vision and cognitive neuroscience to facial behavioral analysis.