10 Questions with NoRILLA Inventor Nesra Yannier
How did you come to do this work and why is it so important to you personally?
I grew up in Turkey where the education system was based mainly on memorization. I was a curious child asking a lot of questions and didn’t always get the answers I was looking for. I always believed that the approach to learning should be different, fostering curiosity and helping children understand the reasons why rather than memorizing facts. To satisfy my own curiosity, I decided to study physics and computer engineering for my undergraduate degrees in Turkey.
When I came to the US to do my master’s at Stanford University, I realized this problem about education was even bigger than I thought. Even though children are curious by nature, according to the National Center for STEM Elementary Education, 1/3 of children have lost interest in science by 4th grade. This will lead to 2.4 million STEM-requiring jobs being unfilled in the very near future.
That’s a huge problem not only for the US but the whole world. I was also observing that even though there are a lot of technologies out there, most of these technologies are making kids socially isolated from their physical environment. I wanted to find a solution to these problems and came up with NoRILLA.
What was your lightbulb moment for NoRILLA?
During my undergraduate degree in Turkey, I started a club at our university to introduce underserved kids to robotics and prepare them for the FIRST Lego League competition, which was happening for the first time in Turkey that year. This experience made me realize how much impact education can have on children’s lives. I loved working with kids and in our first year the team I was coaching got the big project prize, even though they were the only team coming from an underserved background, competing against many teams coming from private schools with a lot of opportunities. The following year, they wanted to enter the competition again but this time they lost as the battery of their robot died during the competition. Even though they were disappointed at first, we continued working together focusing on the importance of persistence, and the learning in the process rather than the outcome, and this time they started training younger kids coming from other low-income schools as well.
Eventually, when I came to the U.S. to pursue my PhD, they took the initiative to start a club in their school to train younger kids and got an international award. I was really touched by this experience, seeing the changes they went through, and wanted to create educational technologies that would help scale this experience. So, I came up with NoRILLA to spread the joy of learning to many others with effective practices and technologies.
What is the elevator pitch for NoRilla?
NoRILLA developed and built on proven research at Carnegie Mellon University, is a patented, award-winning AI-powered mixed-reality system bridging the advantages of physical and virtual worlds to improve children's inquiry-based STEAM learning, more enjoyably and collaboratively. It adds a new interactive, intelligent layer on top of hands-on experimentation to provide personalized interactive feedback to children as they make experiments and discoveries in the real world, fostering their curiosity and 21st-century skills like critical thinking, collaboration, and persistence. Continuing research at Carnegie Mellon University with hundreds of children (recently published in Science Magazine as well as other top journals and conferences) has shown that NoRILLA improves children's learning by 5 times compared to equivalent tablet or computer games while also increasing their interest & enjoyment.
Talk us through your strategy in building a team around you.
I think it’s really important to build a team that you enjoy spending time with and working together with. Work doesn’t feel like work when you enjoy doing what you love and doing it with people you enjoy working with. I try to choose team members who are good problem-solvers, good communicators, that have a growth mindset, are persistent, positive, and passionate about the work we do and helping children.
What has surprised you most about starting NoRILLA?
I think what surprised me most were the reactions from the children when we first started testing NoRILLA with children. Hearing comments like “Can you make one for my birthday? I can trade my toys”, “This is the best day of my life!”, “I never thought something we do at school could be so much fun!” both surprised me and motivated me to take it forward and make it available and beneficial for many more kids.
Talk us through one of your daily rituals.
I really like to walk and stay active. There is research that shows that walking can help you think clearer, and more creatively by activating both your left and right brain. I like that Pittsburgh is very walkable with characteristic neighborhoods and is a mix of urban life and nature together (unlike many other cities in the US). I like being able to just go out and walk to places. I also like playing tennis, which is also a great way to clear your mind, connect with others and stay healthy, I think.
What is a recent challenge you've faced as an entrepreneur and how did you overcome it? What lesson(s) did you take away from it?
As an entrepreneur, you face challenges every day, since you are doing something novel and not easy to do. I think the key is to stay calm, and positive and focus on the solutions rather than the problems. One recent challenge was when we launched our system in Spain (after it was chosen as one of six exhibits around the world for a new AI museum in Spain to showcase the potential of AI for education). We tested everything and shipped our system and when I went there for the exhibit opening, I realized the system was behaving differently than how it usually behaves in the US, because of the changes in the electricity in Europe.
Working with our team, we were able to quickly come up with a solution. Afterward, we got feedback that our exhibit was one of the most reliable and well-received exhibits. I think it is really important to be there for our partners/users and provide a smooth experience satisfying their needs. We try to be as responsive as possible and always be there for them if they need anything, which is important when you are launching a new product I believe.
8. What does the next year look like for NoRILLA?
We have recently received a large grant from the National Science Foundation to expand our AI mixed-reality system and curriculum in collaboration with different schools and organizations while continuing the research around it. We have been receiving feedback from administrators that NoRILLA is filling a big gap they have and that they would like it to be expanded to many different content areas in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) which we are working on. We have also been expanding our system around the US as well as internationally, working with many schools, museums, science centers, after-school programs, and informal learning spaces, to reach more children and families.
What is a key piece of advice you've received that you'd want to share with other founders?
A good piece of advice I have received is that it’s good to celebrate small successes. I have a tendency to start thinking about the next goal as soon as I accomplish one goal, but I learned that it’s also good to stop and celebrate the small accomplishments sometimes before you start thinking about the next milestone or goal you want to achieve.
How can our regional startup community help your efforts?
We are always looking for more partners/organizations to help make our system beneficial for more children. If you’d like to work with us, please contact us at norilla.com.