skip to Main Content

Dr. Raphael Hofstein in Biotechnology Focus: It’s time to declare an end to Canada’s two research solitudes

Dr. Raphael Hofstein
Dr. Raphael Hofstein, president & CEO, MaRS Innovation.

Biotechnology Focus, a compendium of the Canadian life sciences industry, has published a guest column by Dr. Raphael Hofstein, MaRS Innovation’s president & CEO, and Elizabeth Monier-Williams, director of marketing and communications.

The article explores the way research focused on discovery and commercialization are often viewed or positioned as competitors within the funding ecosystem and the need to align their goals:

The time of Canada’s French and English solitudes may be past, as Governor General Michaëlle Jean notably stated when she took office in 2005, but the solitudes of thought concerning how Canada supports basic and commercial research persist.

This thinking is most easily spotted after the government announces a federal budget, triggering a flurry of opinion pieces debating the breakdown for the $2.7 billion Canada spends on research.

Most recently, Jim Balsillie, co-founder of Research in Motion (now BlackBerry Ltd.), wrote for the Globe & Mail about the Canadian need to understand that “geopolitics is at the heart of commercializing ideas,” and create better policies to protect Canadian ideas, including “better
incentives for researchers to spur commercialization,” such as during an academic’s consideration for tenure. Yet, like any business endeavor whose success depends on people, there’s more involved in changing Canada’s approach to commercialization than just policy.

The people must want to change, too.

Continue Reading

What Wayne Gretzky taught me about business in 20 minutes

Editor’s note: We don’t usually post personal essays on MI’s website, but we couldn’t pass on this one. Whether you’re a hockey fan or an entrepreneur looking for a fresh business perspective, we hope you’ll agree.

Last Wednesday, I was meeting an old friend for lunch in downtown Toronto. We’re both from Edmonton; we were classmates at the International Space University in Strasbourg, France. And we’re hockey fans. So I said, “Let’s have lunch at Wayne Gretzky’s.”

We didn’t expect to meet Wayne himself, but that’s what happened. One minute I was eating fish tacos. The next minute, my friend’s pointing with his fork: “Dude, Wayne Gretzky’s right behind you.”

Wayne Gretzky (centre) and MI's Hassan Jaferi (right) with X.
Wayne Gretzky (centre) and MI’s Hassan Jaferi (right) with Matthew Killick.

I was in Grade 2 when Gretzky’s Edmonton Oilers won the Stanley Cup in 1987. One of my classmates was the daughter of Andy Moog, the team goalie. He brought the cup into class after the Oilers won so we could all touch it. I grew up playing street hockey in Edmonton and idolizing Wayne. We all did.

So you’ll understand that we had to stop him and say hi. We just had to.

And then we were stunned when he put his glass down on our table and spent 20 minutes talking to us about his various business activities.

My hands were shaking as we left the restaurant an hour later. But here’s five things I managed to take away from this surreal and wonderful experience.

Continue Reading

WaveCheck Indiegogo campaign co-directors featured in MedCity News article

wave
MI’s Fazila Seker and Elizabeth Monier-Williams, campaign co-directors for WaveCheck, were featured in a MedCity News article about successfully crowdfunding in the healthcare field.

MaRS Innovation’s Dr. Fazila Seker and Elizabeth Monier-Williams spoke with Deanna Pogorelc of MedCity News about how to define success for campaigns crowdfunding for technologies and research related to the medical field.

The article, in MedCity News‘ Hot Topics section, questions whether a crowdfunding campaign needs to reach its funding goal to be deemed successful.

Seker and Monier-Williams completed an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign in December for WaveCheck, a clinical technique developed to let women and men know if their breast cancer chemotherapy is working within weeks of beginning treatment instead of months later when treatment has already ended.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Fazila Seker, the director of technology and venture development at commercialization agency MaRS Innovation, said that one of the trickiest things about the crowdfunding industry is the notion that these platforms have an established crowd that’s lurking around looking for the next best thing.

“You can’t rely entirely on that,” she said. “You need to go out there and do your research and create your own following.”

Continue Reading

WaveCheck co-directers talk crowdfunding commercialization research on CBC’s “The World This Weekend”

waveMaRS Innovation staff and WaveCheck Campaign Co-directors Dr. Fazila Seker and Elizabeth Monier-Williams spoke with the CBC’s Colleen Ross about the process of crowdfunding WaveCheck’s partner-based clinical studies on “The World This Weekend.”

The radio segment, called “Crowdfunding Science,” aired on January 25, 2014 and discussed the lack of funding researchers have access to for commercialization, making it harder to advance research that could be helping people in a variety of industries.

To listen to the full interview, click here.

WaveCheck’s crowdfunding campaign is an example of how MaRS Innovation gets creative when traditional funding channels take too long or run dry, speeding up the commercialization process.

Continue Reading

WaveCheck crowdfunding campaign honours contriburing artists, sponsors and inventors

Reception at Sunnybrook Hospital recognizes WaveCheck’s inventors, contributing artists and the three women featured in the campaign video

The WaveCheck Indiegogo campaign continues to generate wide support from MaRS Innovation’s community. To give back and show their appreciation, the campaign team hosted a reception at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in the Louise Temerty Breast Cancer Centre on November 6, 2013.

IMG_1609
From left, WaveCheck campaign co-director Elizabeth Monier-Williams contributing artist Janet F. Potter, WaveCheck supporter Carmen Tellez O’Mahony, contributing artist Deniz Ergun Seker, WAAC President Dale Butterill and contributing artist Lila Miller.
IMG_1617
WaveCheck’s appreciation event was held at The Louise Temerty Breast Cancer Centre, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.

Present were several members of the Women’s Art Association of Canada (WAAC) who donated 11 of the 15 artworks to the campaign. Also present was Dale Butterill, president of WAAC, who expressed support during her opening remarks. Together with members of WAAC, contributing artists donated over $15,000 worth of art to the campaign.

Continue Reading

MI’s Elizabeth Monier-Williams to speak at TedxWaterlooWomen December 1

Elizabeth Monier-Williams, marketing and communications manager
Elizabeth Monier-Williams, marketing and communications manager at MaRS Innovation.

Elizabeth Monier-Williams, MaRS Innovation’s marketing and communications manager, is giving a Tedx talk at the TedxWaterlooWomen event in Waterloo, Ontario, on December 1.

Read the Kitchener-Waterloo Record’s summary story and their curated highlights from the event’s social chatter on Storify.

The event, hosted by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), will include a live stream of talks from the second annual TedxWomen conference in Washington, D.C., along with talks by local speakers, including Monier-Williams, for the Waterloo audience.

Continue Reading
Back To Top