Member Institutions

Four professors working with MaRS Innovation among U of T’s Inventors of the Year

May 31, 2013
Susanne Staer
Awards

Four University of Toronto (U of T) professors who have commercialization projects in various stages with MaRS Innovation were named to the university’s list of Inventors of the Year.

“The Inventor of the Year Award is meant to recognize inventions that have the potential to improve our quality of life,” said Professor Paul Young, vice-president (research and innovation) and a member of MaRS Innovation’s Board of Directors. “The winning inventions represent the very best of innovation at U of T, and on behalf of the university, I extend my congratulations.

ClevrU vice chair featured in CBC’s Transforming Tech series

Dana Fox, vice chair of Waterloo-based ClevrU Corporation, was featured in CBC’s Transforming Tech: Changing Careers in the Digital Age series, hosted by Matthew Kang.

The interview explores Fox’s career and decision to co-found ClevrU and his ongoing role in the start-up’s development.

Fox’s interview runs just over six minutes. After clicking the link, scroll down the page to the second interview to play the audio file.

Five UTEST companies to tackle critical healthcare challenges

Program’s second cohort includes eQOL, E-Twenty Development, Root2Crown, Treata Smart Solutions and TrendMD

TORONTO (May 14, 2013) — Five companies tackling pervasive healthcare challenges — such as assessing dental health, helping patients and medical personnel navigate hospitals with greater ease, staying current with medical literature, or creating digital tools to help care for the elderly or those with chronic health conditions — have been admitted to the University of Toronto Early Stage Technology (UTEST) program’s second cohort.

UTEST, supported by the University of Toronto’s Connaught Fund, Innovations & Partnerships Office (IPO) and MaRS Innovation (MI), is part of a growing system of incubators and commercialization support services at U of T.

Two companies in UTEST’s second cohort, E-Twenty Development Inc. and Treata Smart Solutions Inc. are participating in Canada 3.0 at the Metro Convention Centre May 14 and 15, 2013, in Toronto.

This announcement was covered in PE Hub.

Each company will receive up to $25,000, incubation space in the MaRS Discovery District, mentoring and business strategy support to develop protectable intellectual property, launch their products and gain market traction. They are also eligible to become clients of MaRS Discovery District’s ICE or Healthcare practices.

UTEST seeks scalable, enterprise-focused software applications interested in building business-to-business customer bases — and preferably operational products with a short term to market. The program is co-directed by Kurtis Scissons (U of T IPO) and Dr. Lyssa Neel (MI).

The second cohort has big shoes to fill. UTEST’s first cohort has collectively secured over $1.2 million in follow-on funding and currently employs 29 highly skilled people (HQPs). Each company also filed solid patent protection and most have secured customers. Notably, Whirlscape’s Indiegogo campaign secured over $87,000 in crowd-sourced product funds from nearly 10,000 users, and was featured in the Financial Post, TechCrunch, Mashable and The Verge, among other global media outlets.

Financial Post profiles OtoSim Inc.’s innovative medical learning device

“If there’s one profession for which you don’t want students to have learning gaps, it’s medicine,” Rebecca Walberg wrote in the Smart Shift: Agenda for Innovation section in the Financial Post on May 7 (reprinted in the Vancouver Sun on May 9 and in the Calgary Herald on June 6, 2013). “Yet that’s exactly what Dr. Paolo Campisi saw while working with medical students at the University of Toronto.”

Walberg’s article, “Innovation in medical learning a Canadian business success story,” describes the process Campisi and his colleague and co-founder Dr. Vito Forte, both of the Hospital for Sick Children and cross-appointed to U of T, undertook to design the OtoSim device, which addresses the gap in how students were learning skills associated with otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat diseases or infections).

Here’s an excerpt (beginning with a quote from Dr. Forte):

“The answer wasn’t more time to lecture or show big pictures on a screen, but rather some kind of instrument that would mimic the experience of looking into an ear with an otoscope. And we went through a number of prototypes developing a simulator that can do just that.”

The result is the OtoSim, brought to market and sold by OtoSim Inc. The simulator consists of a rubber ear made to scale, and a computer display integrated into the model where the eardrum would be in a patient, which can display images of ear canals that correspond to a wide range of medical conditions.

Canadian biotech sector makes strong showing at BIO2013

Every six weeks, MaRS Innovation’s marketing and communications manager writes a guest post for the MaRS Discovery District blog profiling MI’s activities or one of our start-up companies. You can read the original post on the MaRS blog.

Downtown Chicago skyline in late April — **Chicago**‘s famous downtown skyline during the 2013 BIO Convention.

Nearly 14,000 delegates—representing over 1,100 biotechnology companies, academic institutions, state biotechnology centres and related organizations across the United States and more than 60 countries—attended the 2013 BIO International Convention from April 22 to 26, 2013.

The event drew biotechnologists, pharmaceutical industry executives and life sciences researchers, along with sector-based organizations and associations, to Chicago.

According to a press release issued by the conference organizers, BIO 2013 offered “a record number of partnering meetings and panel sessions on the latest science, policy issues and business opportunities and challenges facing the biotechnology industry.”

How Canada’s health-care industry is riding a wave of transition

Bedside Clinical Systems featured on Research Innovation and Commercialization Centre (RICC) panel discussion In an article for YourMississaugaBiz.com, Jon Cook writes, " 'The health-care industry is relying more on the…

Flybits recognized as a context-aware tool for marketing professionals

April 24, 2013
Susanne Staer
Awards

The Flybits mobile user interface presents relevant information from surrounding geo-fences (zones). — The **Flybits** mobile user interface presents relevant information from surrounding geo-fences (zones).

TORONTO, Canada (April 24, 2013) — Flybits Inc. announced today that Forrester Research Inc. has recognized Flybits, a Toronto-based start-up company, as a tool for on-demand marketing processes in a recent report.

The February 2013 Forrester report, written by Anthony Mullen, “Emerging Touchpoints Require a Marketing Mind Shift,” states that to master the new basics, marketing professionals must increase corporate spending on innovation and formalize working relationships in areas such as customer experience, analytics, IT and product design — all of which the Flybits framework addresses.

To address the problem of information overload on mobile devices, Flybits unifies the mobile user experience across multiple channels, creating a cohesive mobile presence for a company’s communication needs. Rather than introducing heterogeneous mobile channels to users, all relevant information can be structured within Flybits Zones — semantic-driven, rule-oriented geo-fences.

ClevrU Corp. acquires NewMindsets Inc. to transform online education market

April 23, 2013
Susanne Staer
Acquisitions

Deal strengthens competitiveness of online learning platform for global mobile learners

The ClevrU platform will integrate New Mindsets Inc.'s technology through this acquisition. — The **ClevrU platform** (shown here) will integrate NewMindsets Inc.’s technology through this acquisition.

WATERLOO, ON, Canada (April 23, 2013) — ClevrU Corporation today announced that it has acquired NewMindsets Inc., a company founded on online pedagogy researched and developed by two Schulich School of Business professors that has provided leading-edge educational content and services to over 10,000 Schulich students at York University over the past decade.

Through the acquisition, ClevrU will fully integrate NewMindsets’ proven e-teaching pedagogy in leadership, researched and developed by Professors Gareth Morgan and Jean Adams, into its world-class e-teaching platform, to be presented to York as a pilot and then delivered to millions of students worldwide.

TechVibes, EdSurge, Private Equity Hub, Yonge Street Media, and the Waterloo Record covered this announcement. The release is also viewable on CNW and in Chinese (.pdf).

The two companies announced a partnership in October 2012 to establish a second-generation online learning standard.

Minuum’s crowdfunding campaign raises 873 per cent of initial goal

Over 9,600 people funded Toronto start-up’s one-dimensional mobile keyboard

Final tally for Minuum's Indiegogo campaign — The final tally for Minuum’s Indiegogo campaign: $87,369 in one month from 9,648 supporters.

TORONTO, Canada (April 18, 2013) — The Indiegogo campaign for Minuum, “the little keyboard for big fingers,” created by Whirlscape Inc., has closed after raising $87,369 in one month.

Minuum is a one-dimensional, tiny keyboard that frees up mobile screen space while allowing fast, accurate typing. Its specialized, patent-protected auto-correction algorithm allows highly imprecise typing, configuring the difference between what you type and what you mean in real time and getting it right even if you miss every single letter.

Read about the Minuum launch and reaching its $60,000 stretch milestone in previous posts. The posts include links to Minuum’s international media coverage. Most recently, their technology and Indiegogo success were featured in The Verge, the Financial Post, Mobile Syrup (includes an excellent Youtube interview with founder Will Walmsley, embedded below) and Tech2.

The campaign’s initial goal — $10,000 to fund the launch of an Android keyboard app — was reached within 14 hours. Since its launch on March 18, the campaign video has been viewed over 1.1 million times.

Did you know Minuum’s campaign is in Indiegogo’s top 10 of all time for projects with the largest number of supporters?

Stem Cell Therapeutics licenses UHN’s Clinical Cancer Stem Cell Program

Stem Cell Therapeutics Corp.

Stem Cell Therapeutics Corp. (TSX-V: SSS), a biopharmaceutical company developing cancer stem cell-related technologies, has signed a definitive license agreement with University Health Network (UHN), Toronto, Canada.

The agreement, developed in collaboration with MaRS Innovation, provides Stem Cell Therapeutics (SCT) with exclusive worldwide rights to an innovative clinical cancer stem cell program.

This announcement builds upon the existing stem cell program agreement between MI, Stem Cell Therapeutics and UHN, which was announced in November 2012.

The initial consideration of $1.6 million for the UHN License is to be satisfied by the issuance of 5,028,571 SCT common shares and 1,600,000 SCT common share purchase warrants to UHN and MaRS Innovation, each warrant allowing its holder to acquire one additional common share at an exercise price of $0.40 until March 15, 2018.