Kensington Market - Little Italy - Little Portugal : Innovation + Job News

There's some good news coming out of the federal government: the University of Toronto has been awarded a total of $7.3 million over the next five years to support eight separate research projects. The money comes via the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), which is the federal government's primary agency for issuing scientific research funds.

The largest grant comes via the Strategic Network Grants (SNG) program, which focuses on supporting research that is likely to have an economic impact on Canada within a decade, and specifically on large-scale collaborative projects that span organizations and disciplines. This $4.4 million grant will go to the Canadian Network for Aquatic Ecosytems, which includes researchers from 11 universities and several government departments, and whose lead researcher is the University of Toronto's Donald Jackson. The network will use the money to investigate how the loss of aquatic biodiversity will affect Canadians—how our services, economy, and industry are changing as a result of environmental stress in aquatic ecosystems. That, said the network in a statement announcing the grant, "will help inform policies on the development of Canada’s natural resources in regions where rapid economic development is underway."

Another $2.9 million will be distributed among seven other projects at the university via a separate grants program. Among the scientists awarded research funds: a chemical engineer studying innovative ways to process pulp and paper mill waste; a materials science researcher exploring efficient light harvesting; and an ecologist examining how to optimize marine protection areas.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

Toronto is known for its cutting edge academic and medical research facilities, but the path from the lab to the marketplace isn't always short or direct.

In 2008, with the goal of making the most of the findings coming out of those facilities, 16 leading institutions including Ryerson University, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and OCAD University joined forces to create MaRS Innovation, a collective commercialization agent. (The MaRS Discovery District, the innovation centre for entrepreneurs, is also a member, though they are often confused, MaRS DD and MaRS Innovation are two separate organizations.)

MaRS Innovation was started with the help of a five year, $15 million federal investment, and this month they were glad to announce they've been awarded a new $15 million grant. The new round of funding comes from the federally run Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR) program.

MaRS Innovation was created, says president and CEO Raphael Hofstein, "to address a very interesting challenge for Canada, which is 'how do you turn outstanding research into something that directly helps the economy?'"

The initial five year period of support, he goes on, was to establish a foundation for the organization. "Now in the next three or four years, we will build the tower on top of the foundation." The first five years gave them a good start, he explains, but it's "a bit of a challenge" as far as the timeline for development with still-emerging technologies. By the end of this second five year period, MaRS will have "meaningful operations"--businesses that have emerged from the research innovations coming out of the member institutions. This funding program, he concludes, "is a game-changer."

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Raphael Hofstein, President and CEO, MaRS Innovation

It's the single largest ever private donation to cancer research in Canada: $50 million to Toronto's Princess Margaret Hospital. The gift comes from Canadian philanthropists Emmanuelle Gattuso and Allan Slaight, who will be making their donation over the next ten years.

It's a personal commitment for them: Gattuso was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002 and treated at Princess Margaret.

Paul Alofs, president and CEO of the Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation, announced the donation earlier this month at a press conference. He was joined by Gattuso and Dr. Bob Bell, president of the University Health Network, who said that, "This donation is going to add significant momentum to Princess Margaret Cancer Centre's global leadership in advancing personalized cancer medicine."

The money will go to creating a "superfund" for recruiting researchers in, and accelerating the development of, personalized cancer medicine. Personalized cancer medicine is based on genetic analysis of individual tumours in order to allow for the development of customized treatment plans that target the specificities of any given patient's disease.

The hospital's work in this area includes precision genomics, advanced tumour biology, immune therapy, and molecular imaging, explained research director Benjamin Neel. "We've probably learned more about the basic biology of cancer in the last year than in all of human history before that," he says. Researchers are now learning how to treat cancer far more precisely. Current therapies like chemotherapy provide only blunt tools by comparison.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Princess Margaret Hospital

It's not the most pressing medical issue, but it's one that affects almost all of us at some point in our lives: post-surgical scarring. It's not just an aesthetic concern -- though in cases like the treatment of burns, the disfiguring effects of scarring can be life-altering -- since scarring can be painful and, depending on its location on the body, also inhibit movement. A local startup called ScarX Therapeutics is working on commercializing a new treatment for post-surgical scarring, and it's just received a $250,000 cash infusion to help things along.

The investment comes courtesy of the Ontario Centres of Excellence, a non-profit research accelerator funded by the provincial government. It's the first award distributed through Ontario's recently expanded market readiness program. It will allow ScarX to begin clinical trials later this year.

The topical treatment, a cream patients would apply themselves, emerged from research done by Hospital for Sick Children scientist Dr. Benjamin Alman. His work (which has also been supported by MaRS Innovation) actually focused on a rare type of tumour originally, until he realized that a pain-relief treatment he'd come across in the course of that research had the effect of diminishing scar formation. He's still hoping that after the scar treatment, which could serve a much wider group of patients, is finished, the molecule in question can be developed into a treatment for that tumour as well.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Ontario Centres of Excellence

Technology news site Techvibes has just unveiled the finalists for 2012's Canadian Startup Awards with Toronto startups snagging more spots than any other city. 

The finalists this year were selected from "well over 1,200 nominees," writes Techvibes president Rob Lewis in a blog post announcing the shortlist. It's a list, happily, that features many Toronto startups, and includes several you might have learned about here on Yonge Street.

Among them are photo sharing site 500px, which has seen exponential growth in its staff over the past year, and also made its first acquisition, Algo Anywhere, in 2012; Wave, which makes cloud-based apps for small businesses; and data sharing platform Hubba, which helps retailers and brands tell their stories more effectively.

Techvibes introduced the awards, in conjunction with consulting firm KPMG, just last year. Toronto-based e-reading company Wattpad won that inaugural award, after more than 11,000 votes were cast.

You have until midnight on Friday, January 25 to cast your ballot.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Techvibes

Canadians pride themselves on being hardy—and especially on being able to withstand weather extremes. We compare notes on the depth of our snowfalls, then go out and play hockey when it's -20 degrees.

The homes we live in aren't quite that immune to the cold though.

According to the National Research Council of Canada, up to 60 per cent of our residential energy use goes to heating our homes—a number that is often so high because much of the heat that's generated rapidly escapes. In an effort to retain more of that heat, and cut energy use, some Toronto researchers and architects are now piloting a nested thermal envelope home design: essentially creating a home within your home, to facilitate heat retention.

Ryerson professor Russell Richman is the co-principal investigator exploring the design. He's working with a colleague from the University of Toronto, Kim Pressnail, as well architecture firm ERA. The idea arose soon after Richman had a baby, he says, and his family had to go from a cooler house to one that was constantly heated to keep the baby comfortable. This got him wondering "Why can't I warm just one little zone?" So that's what Richman then proceeded to do, by installing a space heater. But it also got him thinking about how that effect could be recreated in a larger living space.

The nested design works by creating two zones within a home: a main, fully heated zone at the centre of your house where you do most of your living, and a perimeter buffer zone, which is kept at five degrees. The temperature difference between the zones reduces heat loss off the bat, and then a heat pump installed between the core and the perimeter pumps heat back into the central core of the house before it escapes entirely.

Richman and his colleagues are piloting their concept at a house owned by the University of Toronto, which will provide them with some information about the viability of the nested design as a retrofit for existing homes. That's the harder case. Future investigations will look at how the zone model can be incorporated into new construction from the outset.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Russell Richman, Professor of Architectural Science, Ryerson University

The Association of University Technology Managers, among other things, monitors academic technology transfer data. That is, it looks at the rate at which technological innovations that start out in universities and colleges make it out into the wider world. It's an important indicator, as it helps us understand how effectively and often research gets applied—the rate at which innovations have a chance at actually improving our lives and contributing to our economy.

Recently AUTM released their 2011 Canadian Licensing Activity Survey, and their findings are encouraging. Writing on behalf of the organization, assistant vice-president Gina Funicelli said the survey shows "increased activity between institutions and industry." Moreover, says Funicelli, "a greater focus on industry engagement by Canadian institutions is returning dividends in the form of increased income and institutional equity."

One particularly strong result, according to the survey: "The number of startups created by Canadian institutions increased by 36 per cent" in 2011. (This is perhaps especially significant given that research expenditures were actually down.) And those startups are staying close to home: 100 per cent of them are in the home province of their licensing institution.

For those interested in Toronto's position in all this, here's a number that's certainly startling: of the 68 startups described above, a whopping 34 per cent, or 23 startups, formed from a single institution—the University of Toronto.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: The Association of University Technology Managers Canadian Licensing Activity Survey (2011)

"I've always been an entrepreneur my entire life," says Donny Ouyang, "I started when I was 12."

Like many young entrepreneurs, he quickly found himself more intrigued by his extracurricular activities than anything in the classroom. "Because of that I didn't spend a lot of time learning," Ouyang says. And then, after a pause: "School... wasn't my thing."

It's perhaps especially fitting then that Ouyang has just launched what he describes as the world's first market-driven tutoring platform, called Rayku. He's hoping not only to find success with his startup, but to help students like him who have had bad experiences both at school and with traditional tutoring.

Rayku's idea is simple: tutors sign up to provide online assistance to students via the site's whiteboard and other digitial services, and are rated by their students as they go. The higher they rank—in theory, the more effective they are—the more they can charge.

Currently Rayku is focused on high school and first year univerisity students who need help with math. Ouyang plans to expand in a number of directions: first to other areas of the curriculum (science, essay writing), then to other levels of complexity, and then to a broader range of subjects—everything from standardized test preparation services to financial advising.

The startup has raised $400,000 of investment so far, and is "hiring aggressively," says Ouyang. He hopes to add two business development positions and two engineers to Rayku's staff by January.
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Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Donny Ouyang, Founder & CEO, Rayku

It was only a few weeks ago that we told you about BufferBox, a new network of parcel pick-up stations had just launched in the Toronto area. With a growing list of stations—they're up to about 14 in Toronto and Mississauga and have more going in by the end of the year—and a contract with Metrolinx to help target commuters, things seemed promising for the new startup.

And now, they are looking even more exciting. BufferBox has just announced it has been acquired by Google. Neither BufferBox nor Google would confirm the financial details, but TechCrunch is reporting the purchase price was in the neighbourhood of $17 million.

BufferBox services are free until year's end. When paid service begins they expect they'll be charging $3 or $4 per delivery. The goal is to have approximately 100 stations in the GTA by the end of 2013. Google, meanwhile, is likely looking for a challenger the Amazon Locker parcel delivery program (which is not available in Canada), and is hoping that BufferBox can expand and scale quickly.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Brad Moggach, Sales & Marketing Director, BufferBox; TechCrunch

"While nearly all high growth technology startups have historically emerged from no more than 3-4 startup ecosystems, namely Silicon Valley and Boston, this trend appears to have reached its end. Simultaneous with a global explosion of entrepreneurship has been an explosion in the rise of new startup ecosystems around the world, and a newfound maturity in others."

So begins a new report from the Startup Genome called the Startup Ecosystem Report (available for free online, though registration is required). And among those ecosystems that are currently flourishing: Toronto, which ranks the highest in Canada on the report's index, and eighth in the world. (Vancouver is right behind us in ninth; more surprisingly Waterloo is further behind, at sixteenth.)

All cities in the index are compared to Silicon Valley (which predictably is the benchmark first-place ecoysystem) across a variety of metrics. While we are similar to Silicon Valley in terms of our level of ambition, our technology adoption rates, our sector mix and mentorship support, one key area of difference, according to the report, is that "startups in Toronto receive 71% less funding than SV startups. The capital deficiency exists both before and after product market fit."

While that may sound like grim news, it actually provides a very useful roadmap for future growth. The report goes on to conclude that the current under-investment in Toronto-area startups "presents a large opportunity for investors. Moreover, "policy makers can help closing the funding gap by attracting late-stage venture funds through tax breaks and incentives, and investor-friendly policies."

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Startup Ecosystem Report

Anyone who has had the frustrating experience of telling the nice automated voice at the other end of a customer service help line "no, I meant change of address" over and over again, only to be prompted to repeat themselves, knows that speech recognition software still has a long way to go.

Even more difficult is getting software to not only recognize what you're saying, but translate it into another language. The most advanced translation programs still only get it right about 75 per cent of the time—they still get one word out of every four or five wrong.

Until now, at least. Last month Microsoft's chief research officer, Rick Rashid, unveiled what appears to be a breakthrough in speech recognition and translation software. The new software, which provides simultaneous translation, not only cuts down substantially on errors, it mimics the voice of the original speaker when it produces the translation. (Video of a key part of Rashid's presentation is online; the voice recognition and translation demonstration begins at the seven minute mark.)

The breakthrough is based on research conducted by Microsoft and the University of Toronto, which was published in 2010.

"By using a technique called Deep Neural Networks," writes Rashid in a recent blog post, "which is patterned after human brain behavior, researchers were able to train more discriminative and better speech recognizers than previous methods."

Essentially, this works by processing a great deal more data than previous speech recognition programs had done, allowing the software to more closely mimic the human mind in its attempt to process language. The result is a 30 per cent decrease in errors, according to Rashid, and a much more natural translation experience. That is, if hearing your own voice speaking another language, one you don't even know, doesn't freak you out.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Rick Rashid, Chief Research Officer, Microsoft

Every year leaders from the venture capital, communications and media industries gather for the Canadian Innovation Exchange, a one-day forum dedicated to the country's innovation economy. (This year's CIX takes place in a couple of weeks—at the MaRS Discovery District on November 27.) And every year, a panel of experts selects the CIX Top 20—leading technology-based companies who are showcased at the forum. This year's list has just come out, and there's good news for local entrepreneurs: about half the finalists are Toronto-based companies.

Finalists are divided into two categories: information and communication technology, and digital media. Among the Toronto finalists in the first category are B2B marketers Influitive, audience engagement platform Viafoura and consumer goods software makers Nulogy.

Among the rising stars in the digital media category are liveblogging company ScribbleLive and e-commerce platform Shopcastr. We profiled Shopcastr just a few months ago, when they closed $1 million in new funding.

The other Toronto CIX Top 20 are:
·         Sitescout, which helps small businesses manage their digital advertising;
·         Language learning tool PenyoPal;
·         Employee engagement platform Employtouch;
·         Jibestream Interactive Media, which develops digital wayfinding systems (including 3-D directors for Pearson airport).

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Canadian Innovation Exchange

A problem that we all know about: most mainstream media outlets are currently worried about their futures, facing a dangerous mix of declining revenue, audience fragmentation and eroding public trust.

A problem we discuss less often: the education we offer aspiring journalists hasn't fully caught up to these developments.

Most journalism schools still offer the sort of training they did 10 or 20 years ago: the basics of composition, interviewing, fact-checking and so forth. They've added some instruction to accomodate changes in technology—students can now learn about best practices in social media, for instance—but they haven't adapted to one of the most basic shifts in the industry: newsrooms are relying more on freelancers, ess on staff reporters, to fill their pages and broadcasts. Thus, while graduates of these traditional programs may be able to produce good stories, they haven't been trained to market or sell them to editors—which many, lacking a permanent full-time job, quickly discover is a necessity.

A new fellowship program at U of T is hoping to reverse the traditional order of operations (learn to be a journalist, then acquire a beat and develop subject-specific knowledge): begin with professionals who already have subject-matter expertise, and teach them how to use that knowledge to launch careers or side-businesses in journalism. Because participants already have some professional experience and standing, says program director Robert Steiner, the goal is to "make it about the work, not the degree." This means that participants are focusing on learning how to generate story ideas, pitch them to outlets, and make the most of their expertise by actually doing all of those things (with the help of expert guidance)—not at a university newspaper or through internships, but by pitching major media outlets just a few weeks after starting the program. Early signs are promising: so far one participant has written what became the lead story in the Star's GTA section last week; several others have been published in national newspapers as well.

Steiner freely admits this program won't save journalism as an industry—nor is that his goal ("one of my most liberating moments in this whole experience is when I realized that I wasn't out to save newspapers") but he does hope it will attract some interesting new talent to the field at a time when traditional training methods may not quite be doing the trick.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Robert Steiner, Director of the Fellowship in Glorbal Journalism at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto

Every so often—and especially at this time of year, when many of us are ordering presents and holiday gear—you come home to one of those annoying notices flapping on your door. Missed delivery.

To help shoppers (and the businesses trying to send them their goods) avoid that frustration, a new network of parcel pick-up stations has just launched in the GTA called BufferBox. There will be eight stations in Toronto by the end of this week, with several more elsewhere in the region. Another 10 are expected by year's end, with the goal of expanding nationwide.

To use the service, someone signs up with BufferBox and selects a home location—one of the pick-up stations that have been installed—and then provides that address to a company when ordering items for delivery. When the parcel arrives, BufferBox puts the package in a locker within the station, and then sends you an email with single-use PIN, which you use to open the box and retrieve your item.

The initial set of locations is geared to commuters and transit users: in its first partnership, BufferBox is working with Metrolinx and has installed parcel boxes in five GO stations (Union, Clarkson, Burlington, Oakville, and Port Credit). Three other parcel stations are in 7-Eleven locations, and in the near future, BufferBox also hopes to announce a supermarket partner.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Brad Moggach, Sales & Marketing Director, BufferBox

While solar cells are becoming more common across North America, we are far from making the most of this green energy source. One challenge is increasing the number of people who choose solar over other energy sources; the other is that the solar cells most commonly in use come with several significant problems.

The dominant kind of solar cell right now is silicon, which itself is quite difficult to manufacture and relatively expensive to produce. Moreover, the solar cells which result are more fragile than the industry would like: they can be shattered by something like a severe hail storm, which limits their appeal and use. 

Among solar researchers, therefore, the big goal right now is to come up with something that is easier and cheaper to produce, and also more durable. One such candidate is what's called a colloidal quantum dot solar cell, which meets those goals—but comes with its own liability, At its current early stage of development, CQD cells are much less efficient than silicon solar cells.

Recently, however, researchers at the University of Toronto and the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology have made a breakthrough on that front, setting a record for producing the most efficient CQD cell ever.

Solar cells need to reach about 10 to 15 per cent efficiency in order to be commercially viable. As recently as 10 months ago CDQ cells were at about five per cent efficiency; now researchers, under the leadership of U of T engineering professor Ted Sargeant, have hit the 7 per cent mark—a 37 per cent increase in efficiency, and an important step along the way to make these much cheaper cells ready for the market. The results were published in the July 29, 2012 issue of Nature Nanotechnology.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Liam Mitchell, Communications & Media Relations Strategist, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, University of Toronto