First SFU Exchange Draws 400 participants
May, 2010
UILO office brings faculty and student researchers together with local entrepreneurs
At 7:30 am Eunice Au-Yeung was already directing student volunteers setting up tables and banners for the first SFU Exchange held at the Vancouver campus on May 6, 2010. Au-Yeung is the University Industry Liaison Office (UILO) projects and administration assistant. Later, when nearly 400 people filled the Segal Centre, Au Yeung said, "I'm impressed to see so many people from business and industry sharing their passion with SFU students."
George Agnes, Chemistry professor and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies concurred. "It's great to have such a concentration of SFU research in one place," he said. According to Agnes, learning how to give a presentation to a broad audience is very important for students: "You have to captivate your audience and retain their attention to stimulate their imaginations so that you become a name and face that they remember."
The Exchange also consisted of hundreds of individual meetings. "This is so far outside what students normally experience. They are really pumped about this event," said Agnes.
In addition to SFU students and faculty, the event brought together much of Vancouver's high-tech investment community who were eager to learn of new technologies about to emerge from SFU labs. Dozens of venture capitalists and business development analysts talked with academics at poster sessions and about 30 formal 10 minute pitches. "For me it's primarily a networking thing, because people are here. It sounds tautological but if you want to network, you want to go to events where you know there will be interesting people," said Ed Levinson a business consultant who specializes in commercializing products of university research.
Students also attended from BCIT. "I wish there were more tables, more exhibitors. I love everything about this event. I just want more," said Yaniv Talmor, a recent BCIT business administration graduate who is starting up a web application venture.
Mike Volker, director of the UILO, said, "It doesn't matter if you're at SFU or not, come see us if you want to talk about commercializing your idea." It was Volker's idea, along with dean of applied science Nimal Rajapakse, to hold the SFU Exchange, something that has been missing from Vancouver's high-tech landscape in recent years. "It's good to see people getting together again," said SFU Engineering Science professor Rick Hobson referring to the original ASI Exchange fairs in the early 2000s.
Associate director of the UILO Ian Hand sees another benefit: "When students and faculty see the ideas and talent in other areas of the university it stimulates multidisciplinary ideas leading to collaborative projects, pathbreaking innovations and future new products and services."
Three awards totalling $1,000 were presented to students for the best presentations as follows: 1st place - Donna Hohertz for "A surface plasmon resonance cellular antibody sensor", 2nd place - Saswati Chakladar for "Sweet therapeutics: mechanistic insight into the development of carbohydrate based drugs", 3rd place - Bradley Coleman for "Corporations, we own you! How direct and indirect shareholders can regain control." Ash Parameswaran, professor of Engineering Science and one of the judges, said, "Watching student presentations as a judge was enlightening. I could understand each research project within the first five minutes."
SFU VP Research Mario Pinto in his keynote speech emphasized that recognizing innovation when it happens is not easy. "It requires preparing the mind to think critically, and this is the true role of a university. Without the discovery aspect and ideas, you cannot possibly have innovation. Keep that in mind," Pinto reminded everyone. "We pride ourselves in providing the right environment for ideas to emerge and then being ready to exploit those ideas through the UILO, TIME Centre and Venture Connection." Pinto pointed to 553 technology disclosures and 73 spinoff companies that SFU has generated.
Sponsors of the event included the BC Innovation Council, Technology Incentives, WUTIF, Green Angel Energy, Vantec Angel Network, Vancouver Greentech Exchange, and the BC Angel Forum.
Engineering professor Faisal Beg was excited about the many Biomedical Engineering projects on display. "They're predicting a 72% growth rate in biomedical careers because of aging baby boomers who are living longer than ever. We need to modernize hospitals and provide new gadgets both for home care and for early detection of illness such as Alzheimer's and cancer," he says. SFU has a strong biomedical engineering program.
Megan Griffith, NSERC's Pacific region communications and promotion officer summed up the event: "I was really impressed with the turnout and it's inspiring to see SFU's efforts to bring university researchers and industry closer."