Leo Trottier
Founder and CEO, CleverPet, Inc.; Founder, Co-Director, How.TheyCanTalk Research
Leo Trottier studied cognitive science and A.I. at the University of Toronto, and from there joined UC San Diego’s PhD program in cognitive science. While in the program he started CleverPet, and has since led a successful Kickstarter campaign, raised over $2.5M in investor funding, and launched the CleverPet Hub, an internet connected game console for companion animals that has remotely trained thousands of dogs in their homes with software. In June 2020 he launched FluentPet, a system for building and organizing word button boards that dogs such as Bunny (@whataboutbunny) use to express themselves in surprising ways, and which as of July 2021 has been purchased by over 40,000 customers. In order to rigorously determine if and how dogs and other animals are able to use word buttons in language-like ways, he then started the How.TheyCanTalk Research Initiative, the world's largest study of button-based communication in dogs, comprising over 300 active research participants.
