skip to Main Content

CBC News’ “The National” Features Granata Decision Systems

Amanda Lang interviews U of T prof and co-founder Craig Boutilier in segment on innovative start-ups and Canada’s future

Granata Decision System logo Nov 2013Following an appearance on the CBC’s “Lang and O’Leary Exchange” on November 28, MaRS Innovation UTEST company, Granata Decision Systems, appeared on CBC news “The National.” The segment included an interview with Amanda Lang.

Watch Boutilier’s interview with Lang for “The National” on CBC’s website. 

Screen Shot 2013-12-02 at 4.49.56 PM
Granata Decision Systems’ Co-Founder and University of Toronto Professor Craig Boutilier gives his pitch at a OneEleven investor session. Boutilier and Granata were featured on CBC News’ “The National.”

Founded by Craig Boutilier and Tyler Lu, Granata Decision Systems is one of the first six companies incubated through the UTEST program for early-stage technologies, jointly administered by MaRS Innovation and the University of Toronto.

Granata is one of eight companies to join OneEleven’s accelerator program for companies tackling big data problems.

Their software allows marketers to optimize the effectiveness of their campaigns.

The segment features co-founder Craig Boutilier’s pitch at an invitation-only investor gathering at OneEleven to secure funding to further the success of Granata Decision Systems.

Continue Reading

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

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.

Continue Reading

Crowdmark’s grading software featured in EdSurge

Crowdmark Logo: Grade BetterExam pain is not limited to students, notes Tony Wan of EdSurge in his profile of UTEST start-up company, Crowdmark.

The article, “Crowdmark Lends a Helping Hand with Handwritten Assessments: How one savvy professor is scaling human grading capabilities for handwritten responses” appeared Mar. 17, 2013.

Here’s an excerpt:

Dr. James Colliander, co-founder and CEO of Crowdmark
Dr. James Colliander, co-founder and CEO of Crowdmark. Photo courtesy of Denise Grant. Used with permission.

James Colliander, a Professor Mathematics at the University of Toronto, knew this pain all too well. As a grader for the 2011 Canadian Open Mathematics Challenge, he and a team of volunteers had to deal with 70,000 pages of hand-written responses, a “tremendously inefficient, logistical nightmare” that involved paper shuffling and moving boxes of exams.

That’s when he started working on a way to scale human assessment capabilities. In April 2011, Colliander joined UTEST (University of Toronto Early Stage Technology), an incubator launched by the University of Toronto and MaRS Innovation, to work on his solution, Crowdmark.

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

Shotlst CEO featured in Globe article on future of tech in education

Shotlst LogoMatt Ratto, assistant professor in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information and co-inventor and CEO of Shotlst, a UTEST company, was featured in the Globe and Mail on October 22 in an article by Nick Rockel on how emerging technology will change the education experience.

Here’s an excerpt:

Asked what the technological tools in university classrooms will look and feel like by 2020, Matt Ratto admits he’s no futurist. But the assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information is helping shape the future – by changing students’ relationship with technology.

Continue Reading

Hossein Rahnama, CEO of Flybits, on CBC’s Lang & O’Leary Exchange

Hossein Rahnama on Lang & O'Leary
Hossein Rahnama, CEO of Flybits Inc., on CBC’s Lang & O’Leary Exchange. Rahnama is also a professor at Ryerson University.

Hossein Rahnama, CEO of Flybits, a MaRS Innovation spin-off company, appeared on CBC’s Lang and O’Leary Exchange on August 24, 2012.

Watch Rahnama’s interview on CBC’s Media Player. The interview begins at the 13:40 mark and runs to 19:30.

Rahnama, who is also a professor at Ryerson University and and research director at Ryerson’s Digital Media Zone, was recently named to the MIT Technology Review’s prestigious 35 Inventors Under 35 list for 2012 along with fellow MaRS Innovation inventor Joyce Poon.

He describes his context-aware mobile technology, the importance of adapting research to solve real-world problems, the advantages to running a start-up in Toronto, and growing Flybits while keeping the business in Canada.

Continue Reading

Los Angeles Times covers Dr. Gregory Czarnota’s cancer therapy technology

The Los Angeles Times featured Dr. Gregory Czarnota’s research in their Science Now section on July 10, 2012, which reports on discoveries from the world of science and medicine (update: the article is no longer available online).

Czarnota, a researcher at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, is working with MaRS Innovation to license his patented technology: radiosensitization of tumour cells using a combination of microbubbles and targeted, high-intensity, focused ultrasound.

Continue Reading

Vice-President Joel Liederman to participate in Financial Post’s live chat on Canadian commercialization challenges

Joel Liederman
Joel Liederman, vice-president of Business Development and Physical Sciences at MaRS Innovation

Joel Liederman, MaRS Innovation’s vice-president of Business Development and Physical Sciences, is participating in a live chat on the Financial Post‘s website.

The chat will take place on June 28, 2012 at 2 pm.

Topic: Why Canada can’t do anything with its big ideas

When it comes to academic research and the development or discovery of new concepts or product models, there are few countries in the world that can hold a candle to Canada.

Continue Reading

Montreal’s La Presse covers life science research funding project among MI, CQDM, OCE and OBI

This week, MaRS Innovation (MI) announced a new partnership agreement with The Québec Consortium for Drug Discovery (CQDM), the Ontario Brain Institute (OBI) and Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) to launch the Québec/Ontario CQDM Funding Program.

The funding program will support collaborative life science research projects between the two provinces that seek to develop new tools for biopharmaceutical research.

Continue Reading
Back To Top