higher education : Innovation + Job News

In 2010, we reported that University of Toronto spinoff company Xagenic had secured just over a million dollars in funding to move forward with commercializing its nanotechnology-based diagnostic test. It was about half of the funding the company attracted that year.

Last week, the company got another big boost towards bringing its test—which could help screen for cancer and other diseases—to market, as it closed a $10-million funding round led by Montreal's CTI Life Sciences Fund. The arrangement will see two CTI partners join Xagenic's board.

Dr. Shana Kelley, the founder and CTO of Xagenic, founded the company based on her research at the University of Toronto. In a statement, she said the investment would help "establish Xagenic as a world leader offering rapid, on-demand diagnostic tests." She says these tests should both lower costs and improve care.

Kelley, responding to question by email, said that the funding will allow Xagenic to add some members to its team of 10 over the next year, and will also finance clinical trials.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Shana Kelley, CTO, Xagenic

"We were all talking, and someone brought up a pap test," says Jessica Ching of a conversation in her industrial design class at OCAD. "No really likes going, and it's a problem. This is something that's potentially life-saving, yet people hate it. That's a shame." That observation led Ching and her business partner Evan Moses to found Eve Medical, a Toronto medical device startup that aims to improve health outcomes for women.
 
Since incorporating in 2010, the two-person company has attracted a series of small but significant sources of encouragement and funding, including grants and loans from the provincial Ministry of Innovation, winning the MaRS Up-Start contest and the Martin Walmsley Fellowship for Technical Entrepreneurship.
 
Eve Medical's first product is HerSwab, a device that allows women to collect their own samples to test for vaginal infections such as chlamydia, gonorrhea and, especially, HPV (human papillomavirus). The last is important because the presence of certain strains of HPV can indicate a high-risk of cervical cancer, and diagnosing cases more easily could lead more women into screening for the life-threatening cancer. The device allows women to overcome the significant barrier of needing to visit a clinic for an intimate and sometimes invasive test administered by a doctor.

Ching says she hopes to have the device finalized by next month, after which a launch to market—likely in Europe first, partly because getting regulatory approvals there is easier—will follow.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Jessica Ching, CEO, Eve Medical
 

Ryerson University's Flybits research group, a team working in the school's Digital Media Zone, recently won a "Golden-idea" award for a head-mounted computer display designed for police and security officers.

"Police need access to information, and we usually give them a walkie-talkie," says Dr. Hossein Rahnama, the research director of Ryerson's DMZ. Officers typically need to stop what they are doing to call in requesting or relaying information before returning to the situation at hand. "With head-mounted displays, when they need information, they look at a small screen in front of their eyes and see maps, sensors, etc."

The idea was developed in partnership with the Swedish company Appear, for a challenge developed to find solutions for Motorola's Golden-i wireless headset. "This is a great achievement, showing how effective European and North American partners can work together," Rahnama says.

Such tools may be the future of computing, and not just for police. "This is the post-tablet future of computing," says Rahnama. "Right now, everyone is moving to tablets, but after that, the new generation will be wearable computing."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Dr. Hossein Rahnama, research director, Ryerson Digital Media Zone

The Academy of the Impossible, a new "open source social enterprise" that aims to provide new educational opportunities will officially open its Junction Triangle office and educational space with a party December 16. The project was created by executive director Emily Pohl-Weary and director Jesse Hirsch using a small grant from the Atkinson Foundation and support from Hirsch's organization Metaviews.

"I've been running this writing group, Parkdale Street Writers, since 2008, and we've been camping out in other people's spaces—the library, the community centre—and we were looking for a home," says Pohl-Weary. "Jesse Hirsch does a lot of talks and workshops on media and technology and he was looking for a place where he could turn two-hour workshops into longer-term learning and action. So the Academy of the Impossible is a space for those, and we're hoping we can incubate ideas and projects for students and members."

Pohl-Weary describes the model for the school as collaborative: "The people who use it will be creators and shapers. It more like a conversation, or a learning network, than a lecture."

The Academy launches with nine faculty members, including Hirsch and Pohl-Weary, but the executive director says that the innovative arts, cultural and social project is a labour of love for all of them. As time goes on, some of the programs will generate revenue, she says, and a fundraising strategy will emerge.

The December 16 opening party runs 5pm to 9pm at 231 Wallace Ave.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Emily Pohl-Weary, executive director, Academy of the Impossible

GO Transit, the Ontario-government-run regional transit network in the GTA, launched a new mobile application, GO Mobile, on Nov. 10.

The application for iPhones, Blackberrys and Android-enabled smartphones allows riders to view schedules, receive alerts and personalize information. In a release announcing the application, GO VP Mary Proc said the initiative should enhance customer service.

"We're very excited to offer our passengers the ability to access GO schedule information right in the palm of their hands," stated Proc.

Behind the scenes, the application represents a significant achievement not just for the transit service, but for Ryerson University's Digital Media Zone (DMZ), an 18-month-old innovation and business incubator at the downtown University. Six Ryerson students and one recent graduate collaborated to build the application for GO.

School representatives say this represents an evolution in the university classroom experience, with students getting hands-on, real-life experience dealing with projects for real-world clients. Stephen Johns, a computer-science grad who worked on the project said in a statement, "GO Transit was an ideal partner for our group as they were committed to experiential learning and developing a great, knowledge-based transit application."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Michael Forbes, Ryerson Digital Media Zone; Vanessa Thomas, GO Transit

HRCarbon, a Toronto-based consulting and education firm specializing in carbon management, will soon be partnering with Ontario colleges to help companies in Canada and around the world lower their carbon footprint and, as founder Jay Parmar says, better engage in "climate risk management."

Under a program announced this month, the company will partner with Durham College to develop software to help companies assess and manage their transportation-related carbon emissions. And in a separate partnership that is awaiting announcement by a government agency, according to Parmar, HRCarbon will help develop a course to see 180 students—drawn from existing professionals such as accountants and lawyers— obtain certification as Greenhouse Gas Inventory Quantifiers, in project management and in LEED certification. Parmar points out that HRCarbon is currently the only firm in the world offering education that leads to CSA certification for Greenhouse Gas Inventory Quantification.

Founded four years ago, HRCarbon discovered that in its early consulting meetings, up to 80 per cent of time was being taken up simply explaining the concept of climate change risk management. So they established educational courses on the subject targeted at corporate clients. Since then, the company has established offices in the US and UK and offered its services around the world.

Parmar says the future is bright for the industry. "Every job out there is going to have sustainability embedded in it. And companies will need professionals who understand the risk metrics associated with it." Just as accountants have always helped companies manage their financial risks, he says, they will need to track, measure and manage the risks associated with their carbon footprints. That will become increasingly important as more countries introduce carbon taxes.

Parmar says the company expects to do some hiring over the next year, but cannot say exactly how many new staff will be added. However, he points to still another growth area. "We've partnered up with the CSA and Cushman Wakefield to develop green business standards through a registered Carbon Neutral Program," he says. That program will be launched in July.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Jay Parmar, founder, HRCarbon

The MaRS Discovery District, opened in 2005, has rapidly fulfilled its intended function as a hub of research and an accelerator of innovation—an incubator of dozens of start-up companies and a link between researchers, hospitals, universities, entrepreneurs, financiers and venture capitalists. Today, more than 2,300 people are directly employed by the various tenants housed at its College Street MaRS centre, and it recently announced an expansion that will see it almost double in square footage and make it, according to the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, "the largest urban innovation hub in the world."

The phase two construction—which was always part of the long-term strategy—was halted when the global economic crisis struck in 2008. Now it's back on, with committed tenants and provincial government financing, according to MaRS Discovery District CEO Ilse Treurnicht.

The construction, now underway and scheduled for completion in September 2013, will employ 4,000 workers. Information supplied by the office of the minister of innovation suggests the job gains will not all be temporary, either: after completion, 5,000 people are expected to work at the facility, including employees of anchor tenants Public Health Ontario and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.

"Today, start-ups are blooming and growing across the GTA," Treurnicht writes. "These young, high-growth companies create the majority of new jobs in modern economies.... The expanded MaRS Centre will catalyze more startups and help grow companies that will generate thousands more knowledge-based jobs in the years ahead."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Ilse Treurnicht, CEO, MaRS Discovery District; Office of the Minister of Research and Innovation; Chris Stevenson
Communications Director, MaRS

The video gaming industry in Toronto is taking off. In the same month that Facebook gaming application Zynga bought the local studio FiveMobile and announced they'd be setting up their first Canadian office here, one of the city's large educational institutions decided to give the industry a boost.

Last week George Brown College outlined plans to set up a gaming industry incubator at their facility at 333 King West in downtown Toronto. "With the growth rate in the gaming sector in Ontario predicted to reach 31 per cent over the next three years, according to the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, George Brown College is an a perfect position to provide a leadership role in nurturing the talent in this industry," said Anne Sado, President of George Brown College, in her announcement.

The new incubator will have space for up to 10 companies at a time in 100-150-square-foot office spaces. The school plans to mingle startups with its students in order to see if the arrangement benefit both.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Brock Penner for George Brown College

Earlier this year, we wrote about medical research database startup 1DegreeBio, founded by Alex Hodgson to bring some of the advantages of the open-source, social media and online research worlds to the sphere of antibody research. 1DegreeBio's platform allows researchers to access research and reviews of commercially available antibodies from other researchers around the world instantly. As Hodgson said then, she's dedicated to the proposition that "you can't do great research with crap antibodies."

Last week, as the company celebrated it's first anniversary in business, they received investment money from Digital Science, a research publishing company that is a division of Macmillan Publishers. Digital Science is based in London, UK (with offices in New York and Tokyo) and has been building a portfolio of research software companies. A company spokesperson said in a statement that 1DegreeBio provided a very necessary service to the research community the company aims to serve and therefore made a valuable addition to Digital Science's group of global partners.

Locally, 1DegreeBio Managing Director Hodgson greeted the investment in a statement saying that the money would allow her organization to continue to grow. "This partnership will allow us to expand our platform to make it even easier for the scientific community to connect with top-quality antibodies." She added that the company will soon expand its product offering to include other products.

Since launching a year ago, 1DegreeBio has built a database that lists over 500,000 available antibodies available from over 900 suppliers. Their system of encouraging informed product reviews--a novelty in the medical research field--has generated over 40,000 unique visits to their website.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Kaitlin Thaney, Digital Science; Alex Hodgson, 1DegreeBio

The new Pickering Learning Centre, announced this week by Dave Ryan, the Mayor of Pickering will be the first-ever post-secondary educational institution in the suburban GTA municipality. The facility will be run by Centennial College in partnership with Durham College, and will be located downtown, and is scheduled to be open in time to offer graduate certificate and continuing education programs in time for the fall 2012 semester.

In an email, the mayor's office said that the two-storey centre's location near the under-construction landmark pedestrian bridge will connect it to GO Rail, making it the only Ontario post-secondary educational facility with a direct link to rail transit (although Ryerson and the University of Toronto's proximity to the Toronto subway is effectively similar, and the under-construction subway link to York University will provide that school a similar distinction).

The school is part of an office tower complex directly north of the highway 401 in downtown Pickering that is the centrepiece of the city's downtown revitalization plan.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Mark Guinto, Public Affairs Coordinator, City of Pickering

Spenz, a downtown Toronto startup that has created a personal budgeting app for the iPhone and the web, officially launched late last month at the prestigious TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield event in New York City. After competing with almost 1,000 other companies to be included in the event, Spenz was the only Canadian company accepted.

The company was founded by Justin Hein and Pavel Choulguine in November 2010. They secured angel financing and moved into space at Ryerson's Digital Media Zone, and wound up growing their team to nine staff members in a little over six months.

According to Hein, "Spenz started off slow, with bumpy design, slow development and lost business guys. We were building a business model, coming up with feature sets and constantly changing what Spenz was." In a news release, he added that the Disrupt launch, "was grueling but ultimately rewarding that the judges view Spenz with the same enthusiasm as our investors and team do."

The company claims to offer many more features than standard budgeting applications, with an intuitive back-end that anticipates tags and inputs users will need. Most transactions reportedly take less than three seconds to enter, a major benefit in the market, and the program features a competitive game-like incentive system.

Next up, the company is pursuing another round of financing while it develops its application for the Blackberry, Android and other mobile platforms.

Writer: Edward Keenan

Source: Calvin Sribniak-Jones, Director of Marketing, Spenz

In September 2009, sports fan Jesse S. Moeinifar was listening to a radio talk show debate an essential boxing question: Mike Tyson or Muhammed Ali? "I tried calling in to share my opinion, and I was put on hold for 45 minutes, then nothing. I decided to put together a company that meets the challenge of communication between news organizations and their consumers."

The result, Viafoura, was incubated at MaRS and recently moved into Ryerson's DMZ. Moeinifar says the coding took some time to perfect,but his product--a user engagement platform that allows users to interact with content providers through video, text and video debate--has recently gained notice for its innovation. After launching at the prestigious DEMO conference in California, Viafoura gained notice in the New York Times, among other publications (you can see their launch presentation here).

"Before we even got off the stage, we had six emails from news organizations around the world interested in our product," Moeinifar says. And the momentum continues to grow. After adding a staffer this spring, the company (now three employees strong) recently won the Canada 3.0 pitch-off competition.

The next step? "It pretty much comes down to getting the product out there," Moeinifar says. "Having the product really speaks for itself."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Jesse S. Moeinifar, Founder and CEO, Viafoura

The U of T spin-off company DVS Sciences opened a new R&D headquarters in Markham last week, a step forward in what company President and CEO Scott Tanner describes as a "significant success story" for the local innovation scene.

Tanner said the company had its origins around 2005 within U of T spin-off company Sciex when he began research to apply mass spectrometry to biology through individual cell analysis. DVS was launched in 2009 and moved back into the University of Toronto fold, where Tanner says they were able to take advantage of "multi-faculty, multi-disciplinary" collaboration.

Since then the company has launched six instruments, and recently got a significant boost for its innovative products with the publication of a large paper from Stanford University published earlier this month in the journal Science. "The technology has had great support already, and we had several research papers published. But this is the first big paper in the biological sciences press that people will see...Just since the paper was published, we've been getting four or five inquiries a day."

The gangbusters growth is manifesting in many ways. In addition to opening the new office, Tanner says the company has just finished a round of hiring, adding three staff in the past week. He says that the company will open a sales office in California this summer and he anticipates hiring an additional 22 or so staff by the end of the year (about 13 of them in Markham).

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Scott Tanner, President & CEO, DVS Sciences

John Mighton, founder of Toronto-based non-profit company JUMP math, says that in his youth he had trouble with mathematics. It was only in his twenties that, doing remedial high-school work, he found it somewhat easier. He wound up getting a doctorate in mathematics in his thirties.

At the time he was a playwright, and so he started tutoring math students to make extra money, he says, and found that students who had previously struggled could learn using his method, which breaks math down into smaller steps to ensure mastery at incremental levels, suddenly excelled. "I found it in myself. I'd always assume I had reached a limit when I came to something new and difficult," he says. "Later, I could teach a course on the material I struggled with."

His method, begun as a workbook-based tutoring system, is now slowly spreading throughout schools in Canada and England. Working with a skeletal staff of 10 in his Toronto office, a growing teacher network has enabled rapid growth in the company's business. "We'll train 2,000 teachers this year, and then they often train other teachers," Mighton says. "Building a teacher network is a very cost-effective method of expanding quickly."

Mighton says that now that a randomized controlled study conducted by Sick Kids' Hospital (noted recently in The New York Times) has demonstrated JUMP math can double a students learning growth over five months, the rate of expansion is expected to grow. "The economic and spiritual loss to our country through innumeracy in the population is vast," Mighton says. "And our program is cheaper than other programs. An investment from a corporate partner or a few large donors could in a very short time mean we could reach every school in the country. The gain to our economy and culture would be tremendous."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: John Mighton, Founder, JUMP math

According to MyVoice CEO Alexander Levy, more than 90 per cent of people with communication impairments use primitive aids to help them--or no aids at all. His company hopes to change that with its launch last week of a new mobile application that Levy says will be accessible to anyone with communication challenges.

Yonge Street saw a demonstration of the product earlier this year at a mobile innovation event at MaRS where Minister of Innovation Glen Murray raved that it would transform the lives of some of his friends. It is a location-aware speech aid that offers users a menu of phrases likely to be of use. At Tim Hortons, for instance, it would offer up such phrases as "Tim Bits" and "Double-Double."

The application was developed at the University of Toronto, with investment from Google, Android and NERC. Whereas traditional communication aids cost tens of thousands of dollars, according to the company, MyVoice will be free to try and a full version will cost about $30 per month. It is available on both Android phones and the iPhone.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Andrew Rusk, MyVoice