We are now Early Markers

Our mission is early identification of developmental and behavioral risks. To better reflect this, we changed our name to Early Markers.

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Infant Movement Study: Wrap up

Phase I is now complete

We wrapped up the first phase of this study. The response from parents was gratifying. Thanks to the overwhelming support from the parents, we gathered way more data than we expected. Apologies to those we couldn’t see. It was our pleasure spending time with you and your precious ones. It sure was a nice perk to our professional engagement.

We are now training our computer systems to ‘understand’ infant movements. The results so far, you will be elated to know, are highly encouraging. We took one big step towards an automated early screening tool for developmental disorders. Once again, THANKS for the participation.

Expect to hear from us again late 2018, when we will hopefully get going with the second phase of this study.

Who we are

We are an early stage startup building innovative solutions that will assist clinicians in screening infants for risks of motor delays. Gross motor delays are present in children with cerebral palsy. Motor delays and atypical movements are risk factors for autism spectrum disorders. In the US, 15-20% of children have a developmental or behavioral disability, but less than a third of them get diagnosed before entering school, preventing opportunities for early intervention.
We are comprised of entrepreneurs, clinicians, and academicians with decades-long experience in infant development, early developmental interventions, occupational therapy, behavioral sciences, autism research, and development of computer systems and medical technology that improve health outcomes.

The People

Bharath created this venture with big-time assists from the people below. Bharath has extensive experience incubating, developing, and commercializing several critical medical applications. He also has leadership and entrepreneurial skills that have resulted in several startups. One of them, Northwest Medical Physics Equipment (NMPE), went through a successful exit in 2006. While at NMPE, Bharath led the development – in close coordination with radiation oncology specialists at clinical and academic centers – of external beam radiation therapy planning and tumor localization systems and brought these innovations to market. The stereotactic treatment planning system, pReference, has been used in the radiation treatment planning and delivery of over 4000 treatments at 45 sites in the US and across the world. The tumor localization system, ACCULOC, has been deployed at over 250 radiation therapy centers in the US and is still in wide use.

Bharath Modayur received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington, oh so long ago! He also holds an Affiliate faculty position at University of Washington's department of Electrical Engineering.


Darrell is our Chief Strategy Officer. His business career began at Microsoft, where he held both product management and product planning roles. Mr. Craig was instrumental in helping to build Microsoft’s one-to-many developer evangelism program, the Microsoft Developer Network, from annual revenue in the tens of millions to the hundreds of millions. Mr. Craig then co-founded Think.Act, a consultancy that has helped clients in the technology space with business strategy, product and marketing management, decision support, and new initiative incubation since 2001. Darrell has also been involved in a number of startups in the technology space, from augmented reality to transportation services, with roles as angel investor, marketing lead, formal advisor and consultant. At Launch Bottle, Darrell helped us navigate through the immersive entrepreneurship program, ICorps, hosted by NIH; helps us program manage our projects; and is developing programs that will allow our screening tools to reach parents.

Darrell Craig has an MBA from the University of Texas, Austin.


Siva serves as the Chief Scientist in our SBIR Phase I project on Autism Early Markers detection. He has deep knowledge and experience in web technologies, UI-rich client systems, broad understanding of image processing, computer vision algorithms, with exposure to machine learning, pattern recognition, and conversant in interpreted languages (Python) to assist in rapid prototyping. Siva has a rare combination of scientific expertise vital to the success of our projects and commercial software development skills and experience crucial for the success of this venture.

Siva Narayanan has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington.


Mara is our Research Coordinator, our point person for administration of infant sessions where we gather movement data. Upon graduation (BSN with honors), Mara became a Registered Nurse working in a variety of settings, including home-care and school nursing, before becoming a Research Nurse at Seattle Children's Hospital in 1999. There, she worked in the Cystic Fibrosis Research department for 2 years before transitioning to the role of Cystic Fibrosis Clinic Nurse. In both the research and clinic positions, she excelled at working with families of children of all ages, including infants. As a Research Nurse, she was part of a multidisciplinary team that developed the informed consent and study visit forms, and actively involved in patient recruitment, and conducted study visits. As a Clinic Nurse, she followed patients over time and actively assisted in all aspects of managing a complex chronic illness.

Mara Modayur received her BSN, with honors, from Seattle University.


David is a software developer who thrives at the intersection of cutting-edge research and high quality, commercial software development. David has previously worked at a radiation therapy software startup and a geospatial simulation startup. Yes, startups seem to be his thing. He has developed a wide range of software products used to this day in radiation oncology clinics around the US. As part of a geospatial startup, Depiction, David was instrumental in developing the company's software development infrastructure and a concise approach to a complex problem: bringing geospatial simulation to the everyday user. At Launch Bottle, David is developing front-end user interfaces and web services to manage and analyze behavioral data captured via video cameras.

David Li received his BS from University of Washington, Seattle.


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