Jeff Dahn Halifax, Nova Scotia Nominated by Universities Canada
J. Breanne Everett Calgary, Alberta The Public Policy Forum works with all levels of government and the public service, the private sector, labour, post-secondary institutions, NGOs and Indigenous groups to improve policy outcomes for Canadians. As a non-partisan, member-based organization, we work from “inclusion to conclusion,� by convening discussions on fundamental policy issues and by identifying new options and paths forward. For 30 years, the Public Policy Forum has broken down barriers among sectors, contributing to meaningful change that builds a better Canada.
Nominated by Mitacs
Mark G. Torchia and Richard Tyc Winnipeg, Manitoba Nominated by the Ernest C. Manning Awards Foundation
Christi Belcourt Espanola, Ontario Nominated by the Canada Council for the Arts
Robert E. Burrell Edmonton, Alberta Nominated by Universities Canada
Charles Deguire Boisbriand, Quebec Nominated by the National Research Council Canada
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Meet the New Faces of Canadian Innovation The Public Policy Forum, together with its lead partners, is honoured to be hosting a big thinking discussion featuring the recipients of the inaugural Governor General’s Innovation Awards. Each winner will share his or her story of the success, the obstacles and the triumphs of innovation and provide insights about the future of innovation in Canada.
Sincere thanks to our lead partners:
Thank you to our host:
The recipients of the first annual Governor General’s Innovation Awards provide a window into the passion and perseverance required to build Canada’s next economy. Several describe themselves as naive, by which they mean constitutionally incapable of succumbing to conventional wisdom. It is so often the outliers in society who show us how to work our way to the future. The Public Policy Forum is proud to give voice to this inaugural class of award-winning innovators, both in this booklet and through our town hall. The country is in the early stages of a period of policy activism. Getting it right is vital to our national prosperity and cohesion, and to the ability of future governments to continue to finance social programs and ensure opportunity to our youth. Economic growth does not come easily anymore. It must be earned through the imagination and resolve of entrepreneurs and enterprises and the smart application of public policy. Innovation is not quite a partnership, but it does take a coalition of private and public players each doing its part in order to break out. These recipients provide insights as to how to arrive at that destination more quickly. They speak of the importance of role models, mentors and crossing boundaries. Several identify blockages in the rules around financial backing for their upstart companies as well as the frustrations of zero-risk procurement systems. “I tell politicians they should stop giving me grants and instead give me orders,” says one of the winners. “If you want to have an innovation nation, your biggest buyer has to be innovative.” The individuals profiled on these pages make for a caring and creative collection. They have identified a challenge, determined a solution, and done what is necessary to realize their vision. They made room for change where none existed. They are our emerging economic heroes, inspiring and challenging others to do the same and governments to fashion the necessary policies for real growth. Please join me in congratulating the 2016 recipients of the Governor General’s Innovation Awards! Edward Greenspon President & CEO Public Policy Forum
Jeff Dahn Halifax, Nova Scotia
Nominated by Universities Canada
The power of risk The days are long in Dr. Jeff Dahn’s laboratory at Dalhousie University in Halifax. Dahn, a professor of physics and chemistry, and his group of 25 graduate, undergraduate and postdoctoral researchers are one of the world’s most renowned hubs of expertise in lithium-ion battery technology. References to his research as “incremental” draws the ire of Dahn, whose discoveries have contributed to improvements to the batteries used in everything from laptops and power tools to electric cars. Further developments should contribute to smartgrids critical to storing the power generated by renewable energy sources.
“Universities provide buildings, heat and electricity; they’re stretched just to deliver an undergraduate education…” With stable industry funding, “you can go into an area you know little about and take risks.” — Dr. Jeff Dahn
“Research means sitting there and asking, ‘What are the problems and what do we need to do to address them?’” says Dahn, whose research focuses on addressing three core issues with lithium-ion batteries: They must have higher energy density, longer lifetime and lower cost. Dahn first looked at the properties of lithium battery materials as a graduate student in physics in the late 1970s. He began focusing on lithium-ion batteries at Moli Energy Ltd. in Burnaby, B.C., in the late 1980s. Moving into academia at Simon Fraser University and then Dalhousie, he worked to improve lithium-ion cells. One key focus is longevity. The typical batteries in phones and laptops die after perhaps three years, Dahn explains. He would like to see an electric car’s battery last as long as it does. And the batteries that store renewable energy should remain in use for at least 30 years, as long as the warranty on a solar panel, he says. “Lifetime is critical.” 3M Canada and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) have financed Dahn’s Industrial Research Chair in Materials for Advanced Batteries at Dalhousie for the last two decades. Now a new five-year research partnership with Tesla Motors will begin in June, the first-ever such collaboration for the electric car and energy-storage company. Dahn says this kind of support is critical to innovation. “Universities provide buildings, heat and electricity; they’re stretched just to deliver an undergraduate education,” he says, noting that with stable industry funding, “you can go into an area you know little about and take risks.”
Photo Credit: Nick Pearce, Dalhousie University
Jeff Dahn and his dedicated team of researchers have pioneered the method of high-precision coulometry to rank the life span of Li-ion cells in a few weeks of testing. Not only has this development allowed researchers worldwide to speed up the R&D process and create a better and longer-lasting Li-ion cell, but it will also contribute to the switch of our energy sources from fossil fuels to renewable resources.
Some university professors are overly focused on publishing papers in high-impact journals that “are really about marketing; you have to tell a story that’s beautiful and sexy,” he comments. “Our approach to science is not like that.” Among the many milestones in his career was the invention, along with postdoctoral fellow Zhonghua Lu, of a new, cheaper nickel-manganesecobalt (NMC) positive electrode material. Some NMC grades were patented by 3M in 2005 and today NMC is used in about one-third of all lithium-ion cells around the world. Sitting in the lab one night in 2008, Dahn and graduate student Aaron Smith came up with a way to study the lifetime of lithium-ion cells with a high degree of accuracy. This is critical in battery research; the alternative is to continually charge and discharge batteries over years or even decades until they fail, Dahn explains. “You need to be able to change the cell chemistry and watch the result in a short period of time.” His Dalhousie team pioneered an advanced diagnostic method to accurately measure the “coulombic efficiency” of batteries in just a few weeks. Their work, supported by Automotive Partnership Canada, an initiative of five federal research and granting agencies including NSERC, led to a spin-off company called Novonix. The Dartmouth, N.S., company, which is headed by one of Dahn’s former students, Chris Burns, has begun manufacturing and selling the high-precision battery testers conceived at Dalhousie worldwide. The ability to more quickly quantify and perhaps limit the degradation in batteries will help to improve their energy density and lifetime. This is important to Tesla, which is building a Gigafactory in Nevada that aims to vastly increase world production of lithium-ion batteries by 2020. This will allow it to bring down the price of its cars for the mass market and produce devices for renewable energy storage, which will have a broader societal impact. “Ultimately if we don’t want our planet to burn up we need to stop burning fossil fuels,” says Dahn, who was called “Tesla’s new weapon” in a report in Fortune magazine. He advises researchers to “bite the bullet, invest the time and maybe do something useful,” which especially means “you can’t be afraid to take risks.” One barrier Dahn faces is in his own capabilities, so he maintains a limit of 25 physics, chemistry and materials engineering students in his lab. “If I had more space and money I would turn it down,” he remarks. “In research you have to be able to look at the results and you have to be able to think about them and you have to think about what to do next.” He’s proud that 50 of the graduate students and postdocs who have come through the lab are now key players in the lithium-ion battery industry globally. “They’re like my own kids,” Dahn adds. Indeed his son Jackson, a mechanical engineer, works at Novonix.
J. Breanne Everett Calgary, Alberta Nominated by Mitacs The importance of taking the wheel Most medical residents can barely keep up with the constant demands and long hours spent in specialist training, hospital rounds and patient care. Dr. Breanne Everett added to these pressures during her residency in plastic and reconstructive surgery at the University of Calgary by inventing a new medical technology, starting a company and getting an MBA.
“As front-line health-care providers, we see the issues and deficiencies. Who better to identify where innovation needs to exist? But we haven’t been the people to carry the ball forward.” — Dr. Breanne Everett
Everett was motivated to move into the medical device business after seeing the burden that foot complications common among people with diabetes place on patients and the health-care system, especially in the aging population. Stemming from her research and treatment of wounds, she developed a special insert for shoes that provides feedback to help wearers with reduced sensation in their feet from neuropathic illnesses avoid ulcers and other pressure injuries. The patient responds to cues and alerts that come via a smart watch, for example if a shoe is too tight or there’s a foreign body that’s going to cause a sore. “This is a major issue,” says Everett. Of the eight per cent of patients with diabetes, one-quarter will develop foot ulcers; one in five will lead to amputations. The tissue breakdown is exacerbated by neuropathy and vascular problems, she says. “It’s hard to get ahead of it.” She was determined to combine diabetic foot care and neuroplasticity to address the problem, taking a leave of absence from the residency in 2011 to pursue her MBA and co-found and become CEO of her company, called Orpyx. The name is an anagram of “proxy”, because its product, called the SurroSense Rx, serves as a proxy for the sensation that’s been lost, explains Everett. Everett, 31, credits her parents for encouraging her creative and entrepreneurial talents, and is a Loran Scholar, receiving financial assistance for her undergraduate degree in biochemistry at McGill University from the Loran Scholars Foundation. She’s also benefitted from its continuous mentorship and focus on life-long learning. She says there’s resistance to change in the medical community, with little culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. “As front-line health-care providers, we see the issues and deficiencies. Who better to identify where innovation needs to exist?” she says. “But we haven’t been the people to carry the ball forward.” She was among the first in her program to step aside from a residency, but was fully encouraged to bring her idea to life. She felt she could make it happen, even as a rookie.
Photo Credit: Colin Way
Breanne Everett co-founded Orpyx Medical Technologies to develop her idea for shoe insoles that prompt patients with diabetic foot conditions to move their feet to improve blood flow. This unique, wearable technology has improved users’ quality of life and reduced health care costs by decreasing the risks of sores, infection and amputation caused by diabetes-related nerve damage and poor circulation.
“It doesn’t take a career in medicine to identify problems that are so prevalent in the health-care system,” she says. “I had a sceptical set of eyes,” she comments, as well as a “naïve energy” in identifying areas that could change. “You have to capitalize on that energy.” She hopes she’s created a precedent, indeed at least three others have suspended residencies to start businesses in their own spaces. “That is exciting,” says Everett, who volunteers for Joule Inc., a company recently started by the Canadian Medical Association to encourage and financially support physician-led innovation. Running Orpyx “is a lot of work but it’s very rewarding,” says Everett, recently started a family and who loves to spend time with her two sons, who are 1 and 2 years old. She plans to return to the residency.
The company today has 12 employees. Three-quarters of its funding has come from investors, with the rest from grants and awards from organizations such as the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program and Mitacs Canada, which encourages partnerships between academia and industry. “We apply for everything we can.” She says the integrated care models in provincial health-care systems support innovations such as hers, with a direct relationship between the body implementing the technology and benefitting from savings. The preventative aspect of the product should be especially compelling for a health-care system stretched with caring for people with chronic disease. “It feels like a no-brainer.” Her advice to other would-be medical innovators is “you have to take the wheel,” she says. “Seeing a problem and having a solution in mind and knowing that somebody’s got to do it, why can’t it be you?” It’s equally important to put together a solid health-economics case. Everett thinks wearable technology such as step monitors “has run its course,” mostly because people get bored of the “so-what data” collected. “If it’s not actually fixing a problem, there isn’t a reason to continue using it over time,” she says, while her device “addresses a real problem that exists, preventing amputation.” Clinical trial results of the SurroSense Rx “have really exceeded our expectations,” she says, with a reduced rate of re-ulceration, for example. The product is already on the market, and Everett would like to get it “on the feet of everyone who could potentially benefit,” covered by insurance and government plans. “There are tremendous cost-savings that can be made.” With the ability to measure and precisely quantify movement, the device can be used for any condition that affects gait and balance, such as multiple sclerosis and other degenerative diseases, where patients often end up in wheelchairs prematurely because they have trouble with balance, Everett adds. Other applications include sports performance optimization and injury prevention.
Mark G. Torchia and Richard Tyc Winnipeg, Manitoba
Nominated by the Ernest C. Manning Awards Foundation
From the lunch table to the operating table There’s many an innovation that started out with a concept scribbled on a napkin. For Dr. Mark Torchia and Richard Tyc, P.Eng., it was a long journey from the hasty idea discussed over lunch in a Winnipeg hospital cafeteria in 1990 to a final product. Torchia, a professor of surgery at the University of Manitoba and Tyc, a mechanical engineer, are co-founders of the NeuroBlate System, a laser probe that is inserted into the brain, guided by an MRI, to kill tumour cells in a minimally invasive procedure. Their invention faced challenges, from a lack of funding and regulatory hurdles, to a lag in the development of new technology and resistance by the medical profession to adopt it.
“If the end goal is for Canada to be an innovation nation, we need to determine the outcomes we want, what will be the measures of our success, and then design programs, processes and policies that align.” — Dr. Mark Torchia
“There were times of extreme frustration followed by extraordinary elation,” recalls Torchia, who is now executive director of the Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning at the university. “It wasn’t a straight line.” He first discussed the idea for NeuroBlate when a neurosurgeon colleague at lunchtime talked about a new minimally invasive method for taking biopsies of brain lesions. Why not create a tool to heat and kill cancerous tissue, suggested Torchia, especially in tumours deemed inoperable? “You go into this kind of thing with almost naïveté,” he explains. Indeed it wasn’t until almost a decade later that such a device was even technically feasible, given advances in MRIs and fibre optics. “It was quite an evolution,” recalls Tyc, who came on board with the project in 1999 and has worked on a number of other projects with Torchia. Tyc, who is vice-president of technology and advanced development at Monteris Medical Inc., the Winnipeg company formed in 2003 to commercialize NeuroBlate, says such teamwork is critical to success. “Many minds working together are needed to solve such a challenge.” The technology would be first used to treat patients with brain tumours who have “no other option,” Torchia says. That can mean a tumour is too deep in the brain for an open craniotomy or the cancer is recurrent, such as glioblastoma, which no longer responds to standard therapy. As the product advanced, the pair “had to be innovative about getting funding,” Torchia allows, because granting agencies typically support basic science and discovery rather than application research. “They also tend to be success-driven,”
Photo Credit: Katie Chalmers-Brooks
Mark Torchia and Richard Tyc are the creators of the NeuroBlate System, a medical device that combines a novel laser probe system with real-time image guidance. Using magnetic resonance imaging and sophisticated software, the tool allows neurosurgeons in Canada and abroad to treat brain tumours and other intracranial targets in a minimally invasive way that also reduces post-operative care and health costs.
rather than backing projects that often have negative results along the way, he says. Success rates for some grant competitions are below 30 per cent, which can be a disaster for innovation projects that require continuous and increasing funding. “We found lots of creative ways to get money,” Torchia says, beginning with a local fundraising campaign at St. Boniface General Hospital in Winnipeg that paid for the original NeuroBlate prototype. That led to further venture capital backing its development. “I honestly think it would not have happened if we had to rely on traditional science funding sources,” Torchia says. “If the end goal is for Canada to be an innovation nation, we need to determine the outcomes we want, what will be the measures of our success, and then design programs, processes and policies that align.” Tyc credits the patients involved in early clinical trials for supporting the project. “They had to be willing to be part of a new technology that initially did not have a track record in neurosurgery,” he says. Raising capital was particularly difficult following the tech bust in the early 2000s, he says, noting that it’s critical to develop a firm business model. “If you believe in your idea and you can demonstrate market potential and a genuine need for the innovation, you can succeed,” Tyc advises. One of the major roadblocks in this country is the slow adoption of new technology. To date NeuroBlate has been installed in more than 35 hospitals in the U.S., many of them top-ranked, but just one here, Vancouver General Hospital. One issue in Canada is the need for more evidence of cost recovery, Tyc says, noting that minimally invasive techniques can be less expensive than traditional surgery—not to mention improving the ability of patients to recover quickly. “Brain surgery can be a pretty traumatic thing. With NeuroBlate, many patients go home the next day with a single stitch,” he comments, noting that another barrier with such developments is push-back from surgeons. “The system needs time and more clinical evidence to change practice.” He says NeuroBlate has a huge market. More than 650,000 people are living with brain tumours in the U.S. and many other conditions can benefit from this minimally invasive procedure. The FDA has approved a trial to evaluate its feasibility in medically refractory epilepsy, which causes uncontrolled seizures. Close to one million patients in North America today live with drug-resistant seizures. In the early days there were only a few NeuroBlate procedures per month, Torchia says. To date there have been more than 750 cases in all, with a goal to perform 20 procedures a week in the coming year. “It’s incredibly satisfying to know that we’ve been able to have an impact on patients’ lives,” he adds. “I’m not even sure how to describe what that means.”
Christi Belcourt Espanola, Ontario
Nominated by the Canada Council for the Arts
Using technology for positive change Innovation comes in many forms. For Christi Belcourt it has different colours, textures and meanings. Belcourt, 49, is an internationally recognized Métis visual artist and author whose work is deeply engaged with the natural world, its beauty and its practical value. More recently her work has resulted in innovative creative partnerships that marry traditional knowledge with cutting-edge applied arts and design, using technology and art for social justice and change.
“Artists can be innovators…I have seen how the arts and artists are creating positive change in their communities.” — Christie Belcourt
“Artists can be innovators,” says Belcourt, a member of a prominent Métis family of accomplished artists. An advocate and community organizer, her work crosses many media and has touched innumerable lives. “I have seen how the arts and artists are creating positive change in their communities.” Belcourt says she is honoured to be named among the other innovators, although she is often reluctant to accept awards. “Because while we rightly celebrate the achievements and compassionate work of my fellow recipients, for me, I do not feel my work is separate from the work of the hundreds of thousands of Indigenous Peoples and Nations who are doing work that brings health, healing or light to their communities and yet goes unheralded.” She notes that youth have recently been engaged in efforts to bring attention to the crisis of suicides within Indigenous communities. “This is on top of the states of perpetual crisis and grieving we are facing across our nations,” she says. “Young people and others have repeatedly linked the 150 years of dispossession, residential schools, ongoing colonialism and assimilation policies of successive Canadian government to many of these crises.” As an Indigenous person, mother and artist, “I feel that there is so much more important work to be done,” she adds. “I urge all Canadians to join me in supporting the youth who are calling for foundational change and the good work Indigenous Peoples are doing already to improve the lives of our Peoples.” Much of Belcourt’s work celebrates the beauty of the natural world and traditional views on spirituality and natural medicines, while exploring nature’s symbolic properties. Following the tradition of Métis floral beadwork, she uses the subject matter as a metaphor for human existence to relay a variety of meanings that include concerns for the environment, biodiversity, spirituality and Indigenous rights.
Christi Belcourt uses cuttingedge applied arts and design and new technologies in an effort to raise awareness and to create momentum toward innovative societal change while respecting traditional protocols and ancestral cultural traditions. Her initiatives relate to a wide range of social issues and she champions forwardlooking collaborations that are models of respectful partnerships and principled adaptation of Indigenous cultural influence.
Although known primarily as a painter, she has also worked with beads, hides, clay, copper, wool-trade cloth and other materials such as birch bark, plant fibres and ochre. Named the 2014 Aboriginal Arts Laureate by the Ontario Arts Council and shortlisted for the 2014 and 2015 Premiere’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, her work can be found within the public collections of the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), the Gabriel Dumont Institute (Saskatoon), the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), the Indian and Inuit Art Collection (Gatineau, Quebec), the Thunder Bay Art Gallery and the Canadian Museum of Civilization (Gatineau, Quebec). In 2011, her work titled Giniigaaniimenaning (Looking Forward) was created to commemorate the resilience and strength of Residential School Survivors and their descendants. It was selected and installed as stained glass for permanent exhibit above the main entrance for Members of Parliament in Centre Block on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Belcourt designed the PanAm and ParaPan Medals for the Toronto 2015 Games, and she has been in the news for her collaboration with Italian fashion designer The House of Valentino. Belcourt co-created and co-lead the Willisville Mountain Project, a juried exhibit that involved 40 artists who used art to draw attention to Willisville Mountain, which was slated for quarry. Their project and the subsequent political and media pressure it raised helped to secure a decision by Vale Corp. not to mine the mountain for quartz. Belcourt is the author Medicines To Help Us (2008) and Beadwork (2011), as well as co-author of Jeremy and the Magic Ball (2008). Her artwork has been reproduced in numerous publications and on the covers of many books. In 2014 Belcourt was part of the founding a collective undertaking known as Onaman Collective, which has embarked upon an ambitious program of landbased cultural programming, seeking to reconnect Indigenous youth to knowledge and languages threatened with disappearance. Her signal achievement is the travelling commemorative installation Walking With Our Sisters, a project to honour the lives of murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada and the United States. It has grown into an astounding international seven-year touring memorial involving more than 1 500 artists and thousands of volunteers. The project includes a visionary use of social media, bringing together the artists to advance public awareness of the value of the lives of missing and murdered Indigenous women and to create momentum toward transformative societal change. Walking With Our Sisters is to travel to dozens of communities across North America during its run. Belcourt is pleased that hundreds of thousands of visitors from all cultural backgrounds will have an opportunity to understand and experience this tribute “and to become engaged with the movement for social change on behalf of aboriginal women everywhere.�
Robert E. Burrell Edmonton, Alberta
Nominated by Universities Canada
Valuing serendipity – and failure A biographical sketch of Dr. Robert Burrell calls him a nanotechnologist, but don’t expect him to answer to that. Burrell, a professor of chemical and materials engineering at the University of Alberta and one of the world’s leading experts in advanced metallic films with healing properties, describes his career as “tumultuous.” His boyhood dream was to become a veterinarian, but after studying zoology for two years he moved into philosophy and then plant biology. There was a Masters in soil microbiology, a PhD in ecotoxicology and a postdoctoral fellowship in chemical engineering, after which his pursuit for an academic appointment proved fruitless, with the value placed on specialization.
“Pasteur said that ‘In the fields of observation, chance favours only the prepared mind.’ I think I was prepared for discovery by the breadth of my training.” — Dr. Robert Burrell
“I went in totally the opposite direction,” explains Burrell, who today is the Canada Research Chair in Nanostructured Biomaterials. “Academia could not understand my background – they were more interested in narrow and deep rather than broad interdisciplinary knowledge.” His mixed background proved perfect for a position in industry – and for a life as an innovator. A job at Alcan International, working under a series of visionary mentors such as Dr. Larry Morris and Dr. Harry Sang in one of the most advanced materials laboratories in the world, proved particularly significant. “It was this beginning that allowed me to develop the technologies that I have, and it still influences me to this day.” He learned, for example, that “materials selected for biomedical use were chosen because someone else had used them.” Burrell felt no such constrictions; indeed with a background in what he calls “problem-solving science,” serendipity particularly played a role in his research. “Pasteur said that ‘In the fields of observation, chance favours only the prepared mind,’” he says. “I think I was prepared for discovery by the breadth of my training.” Burrell especially focused on the biological activity of silver, which has important healing properties on wounds but is inactivated over time, for example. His goal was to make dressings with anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial properties using nanotechnology, structured materials that have an extraordinarily small scale. Working at Westaim Technologies Inc., a joint research initiative that included Sherritt Gordon Ltd. as well as the Province of Alberta and the federal government, Burrell used a “sputtering unit” to make silver nanostructures, crystalline films with unique chemical properties. There was “virtually no support for this idea,” he says.
Photo Credit: Ernest C. Manning Awards Foundation
Robert Burrell’s Acticoat is the first burn dressing to simultaneously kill bacteria and decrease inflammation. This revolutionized approach to wound care increases healing rates, reduces the need for skin grafts and cuts down on long-term scar management issues. With his innovation, he has saved thousands of lives and limbs around the world.
Each new adaptation he came up with was a departure from conventional thinking. Many early attempts failed, but that simply allowed him to “go back and think about it,” he says. “Experiments that don’t give the results we expect are where we learn the most.” With each one “we had to figure out what went wrong, prove it and find a direction forward,” he recalls. “The failures led to a much better product.” He particularly selected burn dressings as a “high-need area” and over time produced Acticoat, the first dressing to simultaneously kill bacteria and decrease inflammation. It was the world’s first commercial therapeutic application of nanotechnology. In 2009, Smith & Nephew PLC, one of the world’s largest wound-care companies, acquired Acticoat; since inception the product line has global sales of $1-billion in some 50 countries. Acticoat is one of more than 300 patents and patent applications that Burrell holds worldwide. Its impact is “quite gratifying,” he remarks. “It’s really quite amazing to be able to heal people and change their lives because of the technology.” He credits mentors in his life with “helping even out the highs and lows…You’re in it for the long haul, and you have to keep an even keel.” He’s currently working on new initiatives such as a way for doctors to make rapid diagnoses, a new approach to stem cells and dressings to control scars. Products that help deal with chronic conditions such as wound care among the growing elderly population and that limit stays in hospital are critical, he says. Although medical research is costly, “the most expensive technologies are the ones that don’t work.” The goal of research such as his is to “pick problems to solve that have an impact on people.” Government funding and granting agencies have been helpful to his research, albeit at times “there were incredibly high expectations for us to deliver.” He says that applied research is important to fund, although “if there’s no business case you shouldn’t continue to pour money into it.” It’s important to follow a “gated process,” with a reduction in risk for each step in order to proceed. “Governments and granting agencies have a different view,” he says, worrying about “sunk costs” and often continuing to invest in research in an effort to preserve an investment, even though a technology is unlikely to have clinical or commercial success. “There’s always failures, but if the failures don’t reduce your risk that’s a problem. You have to allow them to fail,” he says. “We need to stop trying to pick winners and losers – no one does that well,” he adds. “Let markets and users decide who the winners and losers are. Do not spend good money to avoid losing sunk dollars, you just lose a lot more.”
Charles Deguire Boisbriand, Quebec
Nominated by the National Research Council Canada
Reaching for inspiration Growing up with three great-uncles who were confined to wheelchairs, living with muscular dystrophy, Charles Deguire learned what ingenuity could produce. They lived life to the fullest despite their disabilities, getting ever-more powerful wheelchairs as the technology improved and their conditions degenerated from the disease. Deguire noticed there wasn’t much available to compensate for the loss of mobility in their upper bodies, however, although one of them, Uncle Jacques, made his own modifications.
“If we want technology to save us, we have to make room for it. They need to lower the roadblocks…I tell the politicians they should stop giving me grants and instead give me orders.” — Charles Deguire
Known to all as Jaco, he declined the fastest, but he was also the family inventor. With no more than a grade 5 education, Jaco fashioned a robotic arm he called the “manipulo” out of items he found around the house and at the local hardware store. “There was a bicycle cable and a lamp frame, a bunch of windshield wipers and a set of hot-dog pincers. The electronics were in a Tupperware container,” Deguire recalls. The contraption worked, allowing Jaco to feed himself, for example. “It changed his life.” Watching his uncle build these rudimentary robotics was equally life-changing for Deguire, then 10 years old. “I was amazed,” he says. “It was mind-opening for me to realize you can improve your quality of life with what’s around you.” Deguire was also an inventor. “I was disassembling everything with electronics in it. I had a few shocks already,” he allows. He got a Bachelor of electrical engineering at École de Technologies Supérieur in Montreal and did projects on the side with his classmate Louis-Joseph Caron L’Écuyer. In third year they attempted a robot arm. “We made it in a weekend,” says Deguire, who was bothered by the lack of robotic devices to assist people in wheelchairs. “I said, ‘We’re sending robots to space, we’re replacing people with robots in factories, but we’re not using robots to help people.’ It kept me up at night.” The two called the invention Jaco and started a company called Kinova Robotics, which today has 65 employees in Boisbriand, north of Montreal. There are plans to double the team and open a new facility by 2017.
Photo Credit: Kinova Robotics
Co-founded by Charles Deguire, Kinova helps people push beyond their physical limitations and offers a more efficient and safer work environment in industrial settings. Kinova’s sleek, energyefficient robotic arms are lightweight, quiet, unobtrusive and weather-resistant. Since its launch in 2010, the JACO arm has offered more autonomy, control and range of motion—as well as improved mental well-being—to Canadians with upper-body mobility restrictions.
Along with the Jaco there is the Mico, a smaller version for reaching items on the wheelchair tray, for instance. Both are easily manipulated using the wheelchair’s controls. In addition to such assistive robotics, Kinova works with organizations like NASA and Google in the area of service robotics, for example doing bomb disposal or managing toxic waste. It is especially focused on surgical robotics, a vast, lucrative and untouched market. Deguire has done well with support from the government, angel investors and product sales, and plans to go after a first round of venture-capital financing. “You have to make a compelling case,” he says. One major frustration, given the aging population, is that Canada has “no clear pathway to integrate innovation in the health-care system,” he comments. “If we want technology to save us, we have to make room for it. They need to lower the roadblocks.” This means that while he got funding for the development of Jaco, there is almost no program that finances pilot-projects and helps users pay for the device. After all it could reduce what the government pays for caregivers, while improving people’s independence and well-being. “I tell the politicians they should stop giving me grants and instead give me orders,” he says. “If you want to have an innovation nation, your biggest buyer has to be innovative.” There are many buyers in Europe, fully covered by insurance. Deguire is gratified to hear how the product has changed their lives. One German man is elated that he can lift a beer to his lips and drink rather than using a straw, while a user in Switzerland has returned to landscape painting. “He’s able not only to feed himself but to return to his passion,” Deguire enthuses. His collaboration with L’Écuyer, today Kinova’s chief technology officer, continues. Deguire says that having such a partner from the start is invaluable for innovation. “It’s a demanding road ahead and you don’t want to travel it alone,” he explains. “You’re going to have motivation faster, you learn to share your ideas and accept the ideas of others. You’re going to go farther.” To pursue a venture such as his “you need to be a bit naïve,” he says. “If you knew everything that had to be achieved to be successful, it would scare off many people.” Indeed Deguire and L’Écuyer watched as fellow graduates landed hot jobs straight out of university, while “we worked 90 hours a week in a basement,” says Deguire. He’d like to see innovators get credit even when they fail, so perhaps they are recognized by potential employers. “The lessons you learn are more valuable than any diploma you can get.” He thinks Uncle Jacques, who has passed away, would be proud of his accomplishments. But Deguire won’t be satisfied until assistive devices make people with disabilities as efficient as those without limitations. Further research on artificial intelligence and new interfaces for the robot arm will be supported by the surgical applications that Kinova is developing.
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