Connecting Start-ups for Growth at Connect '09
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Media Release | October 20, 2009
BRITISH COLUMBIA - Connect '09, the BC Innovation Council's (BCIC) premier event for technology start-ups and innovators took place Monday, October 19 in Vancouver. Over 650 members of BC's robust tech industry - from early stage start-ups to venture capitalists to CEOs of globally recognized technology companies - were in attendance.
"The BC Innovation Council is committed to supporting the advancement of ideas and technologies of BC's brightest to their ultimate goal of investment-ready companies," said Dean Rockwell, CEO of BCIC. "We are grateful to members of BC's science and tech community for their involvement in Connect '09 and for their role in helping to shape and strengthen our province's tech sector."
Connect '09 featured four expert panel sessions, each crafted to benefit start-ups at varying points along their path to commercialization. Each panel featured local experts who volunteered their time and expertise to benefit Connect ‘09's knowledge-hungry audience. A unique networking component featuring another 33 prominent technology leaders from some of BC's most successful tech companies and business accelerators, including Yaletown Venture Partners, Nexterra Inc., and Bootup Labs. For two hours, these leaders mixed and mingled with Connect '09 attendees, offering words of wisdom in the forms of feedback and advice.
"I'd like to congratulate the recipients of the 2009 BC Innovation Council Awards for their exceptional achievements in the commercialization of technology," said Iain Black, Minister of Small Business, Technology and Economic Development. "British Columbia's emerging technology companies are producing extraordinary results, and with the support of the BC Innovation Council they will continue to strengthen BC's position in the global knowledge economy."
Capping off the evening's festivities was the presentation of the annual BC Innovation Council Awards.
The 2009 BCIC Award winners are:
BCIC Ripples of Hope Award in Biotechnology & Entrepreneurship
Winner: Mahmoud Pouladi, Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics, The University of British Columbia
The recipient of this award is a driven scientist with a keen mind. He is a bright PhD student at CMMT with a strong record of productivity; as a young scientist he has already published 12 peer-reviewed papers. His ability to recognize the commercial potential in scientific research led to the submission of a patent application for an HD biomarker test. The goal of the project from which this commercial application arose was to examine the underpinnings of body weight changes in HD. His recognition of the potential commercial application is a testament to his acute sense for entrepreneurship.
He has been a strong promoter of science within the community. He appeared on the Jenn and Joe show on CFUN 1410 AM to promote the "Hike 4 Huntington's" and leads tours through his research lab. Previously as Editor-in-Chief of UBC's Graduate magazine, he carried his message to over 5,000 monthly readers.
About the BCIC Ripples of Hope Award: This award is a partnership with Dr. Michael Hayden, Director of the Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutic. The award provides an internship opportunity to a trainee, supporting them in developing their career in entrepreneurship and commercialization in a biotechnology company in British Columbia.
Emerging Technology Award
Winner: Lungpacer Medical Inc.
Dr. Andy Hoffer, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer; Professor of Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology, SFU
Lungpacer Medical Inc. was recognized for its Transvasular Diaphragm Pacing System. Its system has been developed to assist with the mechanical ventilation of critically ill patients in hospital intensive care units. Lungpacer electrodes are intravenously inserted into the body of a patient to rhythmically pace the diaphragm. This prevents or reverses rapid atrophy that can occur with muscle disuse in these patients. The Lungpacer technology results in faster recovery of a patient's ability to breathe naturally, allowing them to leave intensive care sooner, thereby lowering hospitalization costs.
About the Emerging Technology Award: This award recognizes a new venture at the pre-investment stage that has developed an innovative technology in BC. The Emerging Technology Award is valued at $25,000 which is to be used towards commercialization services for the technology.
Entrepreneurship Fellow Award
Two Entrepreneurship Fellows were recognized in this inaugural year of the award:
Winner: Dr. Brad Buckham, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of Victoria
Dr. Buckham's entrepreneurship activities address the engineering challenges that impact on humans' experiences with the ocean. His innovations involve cabled ocean structures, computer simulations, remotely operated vehicles, wave energy and ocean infrastructure. He collaborates with the Canadian Scientific Submersible Facility and Ocean Network Canada's Neptune project; and he leads the West Coast Wave Collaboration Program.
Together with student and graduate researchers, Dr. Buckham founded a company that uses simulation to reduce human, economic and environmental risk for small and start-up ocean technology companies. He is also co-inventor of SyncWave Power Resonator which harnesses wave energy for sustainable power generation.
Dr. Buckham is noted for his ability to connect people and organizations to move ideas out of the laboratory and into application in the complex and demanding ocean environment. His entrepreneurship has helped to place BC at the forefront of global marine knowledge and technology development.
Winner: Dr. Gerri Sinclair, Executive Director of the Masters of Digital Media Program, Centre for Digital Media
Dr. Sinclair's career spans the fields of Internet and new media technology, entrepreneurship, academic research and government policy. She has made incubation and commercialization of student innovations a focus of the Masters of Digital Media Program. The program also provides commercialization services to local and international digital media companies.
Dr. Sinclair brings extensive experience to her position at the Centre for Digital Media. She was the first president of the Premier's Technology Council, has held esteemed positions at Microsoft Network Canada and IBM. She is also a founding director of the ExCITE Lab at Simon Fraser University and Founder and CEO of NCompass Labs.
Dr. Sinclair is noted for her ability to generate the ideas that will become tomorrow's innovations and her scope is global, in that sense, she is an international entrepreneur of ideas. Dr. Sinclair serves as a model for the entire technology community in British Columbia.
About the Entrepreneurship Fellow Award: This award recognizes a permanent faculty member at a BC postsecondary institution who is a leader in technology innovation and commercialization. This honorary award offers $20,000 to the named fellow to be used for entrepreneurship education or commercialization initiatives at their institution.
Student Business Plan Awards
Winner: Non-Rejectable Engineered Skin Substitute, Department of Surgery, UBC
Technology Innovator: Dr. Farshad Forouzandeh, UBC
Business Plan Collaborators: Hoby Chou and Octavia Yung, SFU
Non-Rejectable Engineered Skin Substitute is a naturally-engineered skin substitute for use in treating burns, ulcers, and other non-healing wounds. Cultured from human skin cells sourced from a live donor, the substitute is available off the shelf. It significantly reduces the waiting period for a permanent skin graft, and it eliminates the need for immunosuppressive drugs.
Winner: Panovex
Technology Innovators: Mahsa Pourazad, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UBC
Hagit Schechter, Dept. of Computer Science, UBC
Panovex's first product, Ziaxis, is an embedded system on chipsets for stereoscopic mobile phones. It reduces the gaps between the capabilities of mobile games and those of console and PC gaming. Ziaxis introduces realistic gaming environments using animations that follow the laws of physics, such as object collisions, lava eruption, fire and smoke. The gaming data is interactively produced and displayed on stereoscopic display, combining realism and fantasy to create new and exciting experiences.
Winner: High Performance XML Processing Technology
Technology Innovator: Ken Herdy, Dept. of Computing Science, SFU
Business Plan Collaborator: Patrick Lam, SFU
As the volume of XML network traffic continues to grow, the demand for the high performance XML processing solutions is increasing. This innovation exchanges data on the Internet and corporate information networks in a platform neutral manner. It obtains significant performance gains through the Single Instruction Multiple Data capabilities of multicore commodity processors.
About the Student Business Plan Awards: The BCIC Student Business Plan Awards recognize the top business plans produced by BCIC graduate scholarship recipients for the commercialization of technology innovations. The recipients include BCIC Innovation Scholars who are leading science and technology graduate students who have developed innovations that have the potential for commercialization.
Connect ‘09 also showcased emerging innovations from academic institutions in BC and a feature address by Leonard Brody, an internationally recognized technology entrepreneur, venture capitalist and best-selling author.
BCIC would like to thank the sponsors of Connect '09 for their generous support.
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About the BC Innovation Council:
The British Columbia Innovation Council (BCIC) is the lead organization charged with driving the commercialization of new technologies in British Columbia. BCIC is focused on accelerating the growth of our science and technology communities and competitively positioning British Columbia in the global science and technology economy in order to provide significant employment opportunities and a high standard of living for British Columbians. BCIC is a Crown agency of the Province of British Columbia. For more information about BCIC, visit www.bcic.ca.
Media Contact:
Lindsay Thom
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