2021 Perspective Kingston

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Kingston | 2 0 2 1

Meet Kingston’s Health Innovation Cluster

Kingston’s Start-Ups are Global Game Changers

Global Talent Lives in Kingston

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Message from Donna Gillespie, Chief Executive Officer Kingston Economic Development Corporation

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here are many approaches to Kingston which deliver the city’s historical past and dynamic future with gorgeous panoramic

views.

Our connectivity for speed and convenience is offered by rail, air, Highway 401, nearby Picton Terminals and new, state of the art electric ferries alongside significant investment in our fibre and broadband infrastructure.

But when newcomers want a crash course on the history, geography and economics of

Kingston, we suggest they walk or bike along the waterfront paths and through our beautiful heritage downtown. It offers a fine perspective of everything Kingston has to offer.

Most newcomers notice the domed roof of our city hall first before their eyes track west to the Queen’s University campus and the Kingston Health Sciences Centre. Usually, they’re struck by the beauty of the city right away and often muse about how lovely it would be to live here. Our future focus is on health innovation and sustainable manufacturing sectors and our existing business base and talented workforce is the catalyst.

And that’s when we start talking about what drives our city today. Sometimes we describe the research that is going on at Queen’s University and St. Lawrence College, and the City’s new $3 million health innovation initiative or our numerous centres of innovation and enterprise that turn ideas into industries. We share success stories of our diverse small and medium

enterprises and our growing foreign direct investments.

We tell them about the young graduates that stay in Kingston to launch start-ups or take jobs with mature companies that have already put roots down here. We talk about the fully serviced employment land that is available and the additional acres we are fast tracking to accommodate new investment opportunities.

And, of course, we show them the available facilities and co-working spaces that are move-in ready.

“This is a city with deep roots and an appreciation of new ideas,” we tell our guests.

“We are building for the future.”

This issue of Perspective offers a sampling of the companies that have already made Kingston home. Given the social and economic impact they’re having on the world, we think of them as our next-door global, game-changing neighbours. If you’re interested in investing in Kingston, we want to talk to you!

Strategic plan 2026

Learn more: healthsci.queensu.ca

Radical Collaboration for a Healthier World

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P e r s p e c t i v e TM 1464 Cornwall Rd, Suite 5, Oakville, ON L6J 7W5 1-866-779-7712 info@perspective.ca perspective.ca Publisher, CeO Steve Montague ViCe-PresiDeNT Ed Martin Writer Frank B. Edwards PerspectiveTM Kingston was produced indepen­dently of the City of Kingston and Kingston Economic Development Corporation. Contents are copyrighted and may not be reproduced without the written consent of Perspective Marketing Inc. The publisher is not liable for any views expressed in the articles and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher or the partners.

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Leading the Green Economy Curve When the world’s first generation of e-vehicles are towed into scrapyards this decade, an innovative facility in Kingston is ready to recycle their massive lithium-ion batteries — and reclaim thousands of tons of their valuable components.

Li-Cycle (NSE: LICY), a new generation “urban mining company” with more than 20 patents, has just wrapped up a pilot project in the city that proves it can recover 95% of a lithium-ion battery’s useful material, including carbonates (manganese and lithium) and sulphates (nickel and cobalt) and refine it for sale back to the manufacturers of new EV batteries. The investment world recognized its innovation earlier this year with an IPO that gives it a $1.55 billion valuation.

Having demonstrated that it can retrieve valuable resources effectively through a non-polluting, hydrometallurgical/wet chemistry process, Li-Cycle is now sharing those results with potential partners and customers around the world. Its first LI battery waste refinery — the final stage of its two-step recycling process — will be completed in Kingston next year with a capacity to process 120,000 electric-vehicle battery packs annually.

In the meantime, Li-Cycle’s new Kingston plant has capacity to grind up 5,000 tonnes of batteries a year, making it the continent’s largest LI battery

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Empowering Teachers to Change Lives recycler. Its mechanical process allows for the recovery of such valuable materials as lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper and aluminum that will be recovered at its new refinery.

The eastern Ontario plant is the first of 20 regional recycling “spokes” located across North America that by 2025 will supply raw material to Li-Cycle’s “hub” refineries in Kingston and three other cities.

Li-Cycle now has three dozen employees at its Kingston research and processing facility. Early work on its operations also involved two other Kingston companies.

Kingston Process Metallurgy Inc. assisted Li-Cycle in scaling up from concept to commercialization; Green Centre Canada helped with Li-Cycle’s refining process in its testing labs. And local firm BGM Metalworks is producing modular units for use in Li-Cycle’s new American facilities.

Li-Cycle CEO and co-founder, Ajay Kochhar, says, “Kingston will continue to be central to our core business as both an operational asset and a facility where we develop, enhance, and improve our technologies.” www.li-cycle.com

Nigerian entrepreneur, Hakeem Subair had to travel halfway around the world to find a way to help sub-Saharan Africa solve its education problem. He found his solution in Kingston.

With the help of supporters there, his One Million Teachers (1MT) social enterprise has created an innovative, grassroots program that pays impoverished teachers to improve their teaching skills.

“Kingston has adopted us,” he says, citing assistance from Queen’s University, St. Lawrence College, Kingston Economic Development Corporation and the local education community. “When it comes to making the world a better place, Kingston punches far above its weight.”

So far, 1MT has reached 17,000 African teachers since Hakeem developed the concept in 2017 at an annual city brainstorming event that works to solve global issues. Using a website and apps, 1MT now offers modest cash rewards to participating teachers as they progress through its training levels.

Education is the key to fighting high child mortality and youth unemployment in Africa, he says. “And teachers are the world’s most important resource. They make things happen.”

Convinced that government agencies take too long to formulate a response to education problems, Hakeem and his team have found ways to upgrade teaching skills by

dealing with individual teachers directly. So far, they have created 415 community learning hubs in 16 countries that bring teachers, mentors and students together with or without classrooms. The countries include Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya and Ghana.

Both Queen’s and St. Lawrence College send volunteers to 1MT’s suburban headquarters to provide help on social media, marketing and programming projects. In addition, small teams of Queen’s education students earn academic credits working with the learning hubs. Experienced teachers host online master classes and mentor 1MT participants.

A Covid-inspired shift to online teaching brought new attention to some of 1MT’s ed-tech content for the Canadian school system, adding additional revenue with the help of government relief programs.

1MT’s latest program is a 2022 four-city photography exhibition (Kingston, New York, London and Stockholm) that highlights its promotion of the United Nation’s sustainable development goal (SDG) of improved education for children. The exhibit focuses on 1MT’s education-through-art program in Nigeria. www.1millionteachers.com

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Rapid Response. On-Site Water Tests in 2 Hours Not 2 Days As the problem of tainted drinking water becomes more acute, TECTAPDS, a high-tech Kingston company has found customers around the globe for its compact, automated watertesting devices.

Models of its compact lab-in-a-box can test multiple water samples at the same time. TECTA-PDS touts them as the world’s first and only “all-inone, self-contained, rapid-automated microbial test for E-coli, coliforms and enterococcus bacteria.” (All other systems use manual, lab-based methods that require 2-3 days for testing.)

Cartridges containing water samples are simply placed in the device where they undergo analysis at the flip of a switch. Users require minimal training and results are available in as little as two hours.

Assembled by Kingston’s Bojack Manufacturing, they sell in the range of $12,000-$21,000 US. Work on the technology began at Queen’s University when Dr. Stephen Brown, a chemistry and environmental sciences professor, combined advanced chemistry with state-of-the-art optical systems and portable incubators to test water. TECTA-PDS was founded shortly afterwards in 2003, sold to French water company VEOLIA

Environment in 2009, and after a major expansion, reacquired in a 2016 buy-out led by current CEO Doug Wilton.

Originally inspired by a tragic 2000 drinking-water accident that sickened hundreds of residents in Walkerton, Ontario, the company’s devices have now found their way into almost 100 indigenous communities across Canada, as well as water systems in 50 countries.

A variety of agencies use the devices to test both drinking and waste water; they have been particularly useful in isolated locales and at the scene of natural disasters where easy access to laboratories is often impossible. A TECTA system was used at the Tokyo Olympics to test all open-water sports venues.

Working from its office/lab in downtown Kingston, the 12-person TECTA-PDS team is expanding its product line and extending its testing solution beyond water into the medical, food and personal care industries. www.tecta-pds.ca

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Virtualized Hybrid Computing in Any Environment Dr. Daniel Desjardins, an ex-RCAF pilot with a PhD in physics and computational electro-dynamics, has assembled a team of programmers and mathematicians that is about to turn the mega-billion-dollar business of cloud computing upside down. Their Kings Distributed Systems (KDS) startup has spent 200,000 hours and $7 million dollars perfecting a computersharing system designed to put idle computers to work.

Simply explained, KDS uses Distributed Compute Protocol to allow computer owners — individuals, corporations, school boards, hospitals to name a few — to “rent” KDS time on any of their computer processors that aren’t being used.

For example, the owner of a single laptop with eight processors might only be using one of them to browse the internet, so the rest can be put to use working on seven mathematical calculations while the computer is logged onto the network. Such private clients are paid in credits that can be redeemed for small amounts of cash.

That is the small scale. (Enter dcp. work on your browser and push START to try it.)

The HUGE scale is using thousands of desktop computers (and GPU

servers) in a large organization to power its own processing needs instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on American cloud-based servers. KDS processing (measured in CPUs) is about 6.7% of the cost of cloud processors like Amazon.

Companies can buy additional CPU power through KDS’s network.

Hospital clients are now using its own computers to tackle the complicated computations needed to optimize the scheduling of its operating rooms. Many computers in the hospital have screensavers that automatically connect to KDS’s system during down time. The hospital saves money while processing the algorithms that help solve a crucial medical crisis — and none of their data leaves the building.

After four years of development, KDS is now staffing up in preparation to take the world of cloud-computing by storm. https://kingsds.network

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Regenerative Medicine Innovators Accelerating Healing Dr. Tim Smith started his health science career researching medical devices as a graduate student at Queen’s University in the late 1980s. Somewhere along the line he chose a career in regenerative medicine — using natural biology to repair the body — over artificial implants.

Today, he and Octane Medical cofounder Ian Grant, have bet their future on the science of growing tissue to restore sick and damaged bodies.

“It’s a $20 billion industry this year,” Tim says. “And it’s growing to $100 billion by 2035.”

With a staff of 130, they oversee Octane’s five commercial medical divisions that include Octane Ortho (tissue-engineering for cartilage replacement), Octane Clinical Systems (radioisotope-based medical imaging), and Octane EXO (spinal implants for degenerative disc disease).

Their 40,000 square-foot facility next to Highway 401 is a completely repurposed industrial building whose interior has a sci-fi vibe thanks to its bio-labs, network of clean rooms and next-generation manufacturing floor that annually produces hundreds of thousands of medical devices, biomaterials and instrumentation for international markets.

“We compare costs globally,” Tim says about their decision to keep their

manufacturing in-house. “And we continue to be competitive in product cost here.”

While Octane funds essentially all its own research and development, it looks for international partners to effectively access global markets. In 2015, Swiss bio-science giant, Lonza, began an evaluation of Octane Biotech’s Cocoon Technology that allows hospitals to create patient-specific cellular implants, and then acquired a controlling interest three years later.

An international company based primarily on Canadian science, Octane continues to have strong ties to Queen’s and other universities through internships and placement programs, as well as sponsoring graduate research. Both co-founders have decades-old ties to Kingston and continue to see their future there.

“It’s a wonderful place to live and work,” says Tim. “It’s a supportive community and the location (between Montreal, Toronto and the U.S) really works.” www.octaneco.com

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Mobile, Stand-Alone Office Pods Providing a Safe, Private Workspace Pennsylvania entrepreneur Glenn Bostock did not hesitate when choosing Kingston as the location for his second factory several years ago. He had fallen in love with the area during his childhood and a new business venture was a good excuse to spend more time there. So he joined the city’s engineering and metal work community.

A self-taught designer with a penchant for fine woodworking, Glenn had been upgrading and remodelling the interiors of elevator cars since the early 1990s.

Global giant Otis Elevator was an early client.

The company’s specialty turned into a solid business over the years and led him to a new niche product — small work pods for open-concept offices.

The initial pod idea took shape in 2016 when Glenn met an office-space consultant who suggested using his elevator car expertise to build portable, soundproof mini workstations, phone booths and meeting rooms. Careful design and standard sizes allowed for easy customization of the units with lots of frame, wall panel and flooring options.

Thousands of SnapCab pods found their way into Amazon warehouses, government and corporate offices, libraries and onto noisy factory floors.

The Kingston pod business had grown to $7 million US/year and was preparing to expand production when Covid drove the world’s office workers into their homes.

But, instead of panicking, Glenn pivoted into new lines.

SnapCab re-designed its 4-person meeting rooms into one-person offices and divided their two-person meeting rooms into “isolation pods” that had glass panels to protect users from each other — equipping them with individual HEPA air filters.

At temporary clinics, the “isolation pods” were adapted (with one-way glass) into consultation rooms. Larger pods became portable examination rooms. “Testing pods” with sealed, external armholes can be used at Covid testing sites.

Instead of shutting down because of Covid, SnapCab kept its 40 employees busy and found a way to heed the prime minister’s call to action.

“My motto is: Be kind. Be authentic. Be useful,” says Glenn. www.snapcab.com

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Enabling Lab Grade Testing Anywhere In four short years, a trio of newlyminted Queen’s graduates have invented a system to tackle the world’s deadly opiate problem and harnessed local technology innovation programs to develop and start marketing it. Once it was ready for trials, they literally took their hand-held device out on the city streets.

Using Spectra Plasmonics’s lab-grade testing device, Kingston street-health workers have been able to easily analyze a 5-mg sample of cocaine or heroin and tell a client within minutes what other harmful components have been added to it. The technology is a powerful weapon against such deadly additives as fentanyl and carfentanil (up to 100 and 10,000 times the toxicity of morphine respectively) that have killed more than 14,000 Canadian drug users since 2016.

The young entrepreneurs — Malcolm Eade (B.Sc.) and his two co-founding partners, Tyler Witney (B.Comm.) and Christian Baldwin (B.Eng.) — laid the foundation of Spectra during a university innovation initiative in the summer of 2017 and then decided to stay in Kingston to launch it.

The Spectra technology uses research from Queen’s chemical engineering department and a modified off-the-shelf spectrometer that accepts a dissolved drug sample onto the company’s disposable,

sensing chip. The process’s ultra-sensitive nano technology is the key to its success.

“The process needs to be very sensitive to detect fentanyl,” explains Malcolm.

The device’s portability and quick results add to his confidence in its eventual success with such clients as frontline health workers, first responders, and public health systems.

In addition to continued support from the Dunin-Deshpande Queen’s Innovation Centre (technology transfer), Kingston Economic Development Corporation (business strategy), Spectra’s small eightperson staff has joined the Entrepreneurs in Residence program at Kingston’s Launch Lab that supplies them with business mentors.

After their latest round of software upgrades in response to the ongoing trials, they are getting ready to ship across Canada, offering customers training, ongoing support and the platform’s testing consumables.

Current plans call for expansion into the U.S. where more than 1,300 deaths a week are attributed to opioid overdoses. www.spectraplasmonics.com

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Start-Up to Success Story: World Leader in Lasers In less than 10 years, an innovative Kingston start-up has grown into an international success story that is revolutionizing assembly-line laser welding around the world, especially in the world of electric-vehicle battery manufacturing.

A decade ago, physics PhD candidate Paul Webster and his Queen’s thesis advisor, James Fraser, turned their attention from controlling surgical lasers to cutting and drilling metal with assembly line robots.

Knowing early on that they had a revolutionary and profitable idea, Dr. Webster approached Queen’s PARTEQ Innovations office for help patenting and marketing his “inline coherent imaging” technology.

PARTEQ also introduced him to Kingston entrepreneur Roger Bowes.

The pair licensed the technology from Queen’s and co-founded Laser Depth Dynamics (LDD).

Together they created technology that consistently monitors welding and cutting operations in minute detail while it is being done, eliminating the need to check each piece after the process. Live monitoring allows factories to avoid the waste of defective parts and saves after-the-fact inspection time.

In 2017, just five years after the launch of LDD, the innovative company was purchased by IPG Photonics, a Massachusetts-based, multinational laser company (NASDAQ:IPGP) that married the monitoring technology to its robotic, laser welding systems. The company’s LDD-700 laser-monitoring technology now offers automobile manufacturers and the aerospace industry exacting control of a range of welding operations. It is of particular interest to e-vehicle battery manufacturers; each battery requires thousands of delicate cells to be welded into place with tolerances measured in fractions of a hair width. Too shallow and the battery won’t work. Too deep and it will explode.

With about 30 highly trained employees, Dr. Webster says the company is committed to Kingston.

“IPG likes our proximity to Queen’s,” he says. “They produce a diversity of talent and research that we need.” www.ipgphotonics.com

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WORLD 2021 Times Higher Education Impact Rankings, a global ranking of more than 1,200 universities

We are advancing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals within and beyond our local community.

queensu.ca

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Supporting women entrepreneurs in Kingston and beyond

By Queen’s University Communications

Since launching two years ago, Queen’s Partnerships and Innovation’s WE-CAN Project has supported more than 1000 women from underrepresented groups and sectors in achieving their entrepreneurial goals.

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n August 2019, Queen’s University’s Partnerships and Innovation (QPI) received a commitment of $3.2 million from the federal government’s Women Entrepreneurship Strategy (WES) Ecosystem Fund, administered by the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, to support women entrepreneurs in starting and/or growing their businesses. Two months later, QPI launched the Women Entrepreneurs Can or WE-CAN Project.

The WE-CAN Project is an initiative designed to equip, engage, and empower women-identifying entrepreneurs to launch and grow their businesses in the greater Kingston region. All WECAN programs and services prioritize underrepresented groups, namely women in technology, Indigenous women, newcomer women, visible minority/ racialized women, women with a disability, rural women, women from the LGBTQ+ community, and women under 40 years of age.

Tailored programs and services In the past two years, QPI has worked closely with its community partners – Kingston Economic Development Corporation, L-SPARK, KEYS Job Centre, St. Lawrence College, Okwaho Equal Source, and the City of Kingston – to deliver a wide range of programs and services to more than 1000 clients.

In addition, the Dunin-Deshpande Queen’s Innovation Centre (DDQIC) and the Queen’s Business Law Clinic have

provided support and services as two key internal partners.

Together, QPI and its partners offer a wide range of programs and services which meet the needs of its core service groups.

Key programs include the Compass North Accelerator and PropelHER Program for women in technology, the KweBiz Program for Indigenous women entrepreneurs, the Hire Yourself Program for newcomers to Canada, the YourWay Program for local newcomers, visible minority/racialized women, and women with a disability, the Rural Mentorship Program for rural women, the LEAD Program for women in C-suite positions, the Fast Track Exporting Program for women entrepreneurs, and The Hive and Konnect programs for women under 40.

The WE-CAN Project also hosts regular online workshops and virtual cafes on topics ranging from marketing and finance to creating businesses that are more inclusive, accessible, and diverse.

“From my very first connection with WE-CAN, I felt supported and an immediate sense that I had met specialists who understand the unique challenges of women of colour in doing business and could help me expand and grow my work,” says WE-CAN client V. Ophelia Rigault, a Kingston grief counsellor and speaker. “I am so excited to be on this journey.”

Building a resilient community For 2020/2021, the WE-CAN Project received a further $250,000 in funding

to run an additional suite of programs and services to further meet the needs of women entrepreneurs from the BIPOC community and women with a disability. The funding also made possible a series of specialized sales coaching programs for women with existing businesses negatively affected

by COVID-19.

As a part of the WE-CAN Project, women entrepreneurs across the greater Kingston region have reported feeling less isolated and more in tune with the local business ecosystem.

Besides receiving weekly e-bulletins updating them on relevant news, information, and funding opportunities, WE-CAN clients are also able to access a private Facebook group where they can share resources and provide peer support.

“WE-CAN has given me the opportunity to network even when we can’t meet like-minded businesswomen in person,” shares Denise Oomen, owner of Creekfalls Creative in South Frontenac. “The networking and educational opportunities they offer are extremely important to my mental health and my business growth.”

Finding success in the midst of a global pandemic seems unlikely; yet for hundreds of women entrepreneurs in the Kingston region, growth has come as a result of making new connections, uncovering new business methodologies, and mindset practices.

The WE-CAN Project came at a time when women entrepreneurs in Canada were experiencing greater financial losses than their male counterparts due to lockdown closures, according to the Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub (WEKH). The WEKH also reports that women are less likely to seek and receive financing than men and firms owned by men are more likely to acquire venture capital or angel funding and other forms of leverage, such as trade credit or capital

WE-CAN client V. Ophelia Rigault, a Kingston grief counsellor and speaker leasing, than their female-identifying counterparts.

By responding in real-time to the needs of women entrepreneurs across the region, WE-CAN has been able to provide timely resources, supports and programming to help businesses address and overcome the challenges of the day.

“With the right tools, mindset and support network, any business can flourish,” says Kerry Ramsay, WE-CAN Project Manager. “Our WE-CAN programs and services are infused with the diverse voices of the women who live and work right here in our community. They are our workshop leaders, coaches, cheerleaders and sounding boards. Supporting and learning from these resilient and hard-working women has been a lifechanging experience for us all.”

Regular program updates and success stories from the WE-CAN community are shared on the QPI website and WE-CAN social media pages: Facebook,Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Story originally published in the Queen’s Gazette.

Terry Varga

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Why are people moving to Kingston? Quality of Life, Culture & Jobs

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hile the national job scene has shifted monumentally since Covid arrived in Canada, most employers in Kingston remain confident that they can attract workers and entrepreneurial talent to the city. Even if all other considerations are equal, they believe that Kingston’s quality of life and its easy access to Toronto, Montreal and U.S. tip the balance in their favour.

Kings Distributed Systems CEO Daniel Desjardins says he is seeing a reverse brain drain as he adds computer engineers and mathematicians to his growing staff from Silicon Valley, Waterloo and Toronto. “It’s about lifestyle,” he says. “And the water [Lake Ontario].”

Octane Medical CEO Tim Smith receives two or three unsolicited resumes a day from scientists and researchers around the world who recognize the potential of his company’s advances in regenerative medicine.

“When they’re applying to work for us, they’ve already accepted Kingston.”

After 39 years of helping people find jobs in Kingston, Michael Harris, Executive Director of KEYS, a publicly funded employment office with 90 staffers, believes that the Covid crisis will increase Kingston’s appeal.

“People have paused due to Covid to reconsider their career options,” he says.

“They’re retraining and retooling.” He believes people may be adjusting their

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Sandra Carlton,VP of Human Resources at Kingston Health Sciences Centre, is responsible for about 7,300 Kingston jobs and knows the challenges of health care recruiting but she believes in the pull of the city. “There are a lot of attractions to living here,” she says.

“And with the presence of high-tech, government, health care, the universities and college there are good job prospects for spouses, partners and adult family members.” She is quick to point out that hospitals also hire IT, finance, HR and environmental service workers.

Sandra also believes that Kingston is becoming more culturally diverse thanks to its post-secondary institutions and the presence of CFB Kingston’s large military population.

KEYS’s Michael Harris echoes her observation. “Kingston is much more diverse… it’s reaching a critical mass that has new communities becoming established.” KEYS now has 18 Arabicspeaking staff members and has helped

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settle 500 international refugees in the past five years.

KEYS works with hundreds of employers a year to source workers, offering cost-free job fairs, social media promotions and specialty recruiting programs such as a dual career project that helps find jobs for spouses.

Glenn Bostock, owner of office pod manufacturer SnapCab, says what he really wants to find in Kingston are good people.

“We’re careful with who we hire,” he says about building a community of workers. “We can teach skills. We really look for people who know how to get along,” www.kingstonecdev.com/KingstonisHiring

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Next Horizon – Connecting International Graduates to Local Opportunity

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he innovation and quality of the education offered at both Queen’s University and St. Lawrence College attract international students from all over the world. Many of these students want to stay and make their homes and their careers in Canada once they graduate.

The Kingston community is doing its part to retain international graduates and thereby add to an increasingly diverse and globally-connected workforce.

International students, who have already been in Canada for years when they graduate, are in many cases already familiar with Canadian society, yet they do not know how to seek out the help they need to connect to the professional-level labour market. Building on the success of a recent pilot program, KEYS Job Centre is actively recruiting international graduates: preparing them for their professional job search; assisting them to build a career-focused

network; and connecting them with local businesses that recognize the outstanding qualifications of these candidates. With a 2-year grant from RBC Future Launch, KEYS’ Next Horizon initiative will assist as many international graduates as possible and give them the tools they need to build a future career in Kingston.

“As a relative newcomer to Canada, I have first-hand knowledge of many of the challenges faced by international job seekers,” states Sonia Verjovsky, Program Coordinator of the Next Horizon initiative, “I also understand what it is like to develop professionally elsewhere and then to transfer these skills to a new country. This program will offer the support international graduates need to successfully transition to career-entry employment opportunities.”

Preparing the graduates for their next career steps is only half of the hiring

equation. KEYS will also leverage its network and long-standing relationships with the local business community to actively market these candidates and to become their entry to a professional network. During that recent pilot project, over 20 local businesses hired 25 international graduates and report the results to be universally successful.

Considering the value of international graduates to regional economic recovery and growth, it is imperative that the business community recognize and value this talent pool.

By supporting international graduates to transition into career-level opportunities within the Kingston community, initiatives like Next Horizon are an important part of a successful workforce development strategy within the city; and can help to create the skilled and diverse workforce needed to grow the local economy.

To find out more about the Next Horizon initiative and how we connect job seekers of all ages and abilities to local employment opportunities; while assisting local employers to find the right talent, please contact KEYS Job Centre at 613-546-5559 or info@keys.ca KEYS Job Centre is a registered charity.They provide their programs free of charge.While their primary goal is to help those seeking employment connect with businesses, they also help newcomers and refugees to settle in the community.They offer a variety of opportunities for local businesses and professionals to help other members of their community through volunteering. For those not able to give their time, they graciously accept financial donations to help them continue the work they do.

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Wanted: Health Science Innovators

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hen Don Aldridge, the executive leading Kingston’s new $3 million health innovation initiative, first arrived at Queen’s School of Engineering as a student, the city’s downtown heritage limestone buildings were still coated in the grime of its fading waterfront industries.

Forty-five years later, he now walks entrepreneurial newcomers across city hall’s handsome market square and teases them with views of sailboats and restaurant patios while pitching the benefits of building their futures in Kingston. The city started the 21st Century with a facelift and now it is on the hunt for a new generation of health sector innovators.

Traditionally Kingston has offered business newcomers proximity to large markets (Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and upstate New York are only two hours away), family-friendly neighbourhoods, affordable housing and a big backyard

that sprawls between Lake Ontario and a picturesque countryside.

But quality of life alone is no longer enough to attract business. So, Kingston has added a new selling point — easy access to a dynamic local health ecosystem that is hungry for more members, both small start-ups and established companies.

Kingston’s new health innovation initiative (dubbed Health Innovation YGK) is backed by several local partners that include Queen’s University, St. Lawrence College, Kingston Health Sciences Centre, Kingston Economic Development Corporation and various research centres, incubators and accelerators who have joined forces to steer newcomers toward success.

Ben McIlquham, Kingston Economic Development’s investment manager for health innovation, is charged with attracting new business and giving all the

players in that cluster the support they need to succeed and grow.

“I’m also a lead on our new KingstonSyracuse pathway strategy that helps local companies planning an expansion into the U.S. navigate a soft landing in upstate New York — and bring American companies into the Canadian market via Kingston,” he explains.

Some start-up needs are as simple as free temporary office space and modest funding while others require access to subsidized laboratories and computing centres to help with R&D and take technology from concept to a manufacturing scale.

Kingston already has more than 40 health-related companies. One of the newest is Spectra Plasmonics, a start-up with a handheld device for testing the composition of street drugs; Octane is a 20-year-old scientific wunderkind developing revolutionary cell therapies and bone replacement technology. Kingston

sees them all as proof that its hunt for innovators will open new opportunities for every participant — both public and private — in its expanding health sciences hub. www.kingstonecdev.com/HIYGK

Hospitals are fighting to clear surgical backlog but are understaffed and overworked.

Smart, Data-Driven Hospitals – Without the Cloud –

By optimizing surgical OR block schedules, hospitals can do more with existing resources. But decision models for schedule creation have between 3,000 and 5,000 decision points, impossible for humans to optimize using intuition or experience alone.

AI algorithms can, however, and they are great at it. But AI is expensive to run in the cloud. Cash-conscious hospitals don’t want to spend $200,000 per month on Microsoft Azure, nor do they want to send private data offsite. What if the hospital’s existing computers ran a screensaver when idle – a modern take on SETI@home – allowing them to run predictive analytics on all possible future block schedules? Millions of calculations would converge on highly optimized schedules.

Developed by Kings Distributed Systems, Osler is a surgical OR block schedule optimization engine powered by the Distributed Compute Protocol (DCP). DCP is a secure high throughput computing framework built on web technology that allows hospitals to leverage their existing computers to power data-driven, Smart Hospital applications like Osler.

At a mere fraction of the cost of cloud and without any data leaving the building, DCP helps hospitals usher in digital transformation.

Contact the Osler team at: osler@kingsds.network and find out more at https://kingsds.network/osler.html

Perspective

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K I N G S T O N

14

Supercharge Your Electric Car Investment The increasing number of electric vehicles (EVs) on our streets will mean a surge in new jobs, products, and businesses both in Canada and around the world.

K

eeping those businesses moving forward will require a home base close to the right markets, skilled and knowledgeable professionals to do the work, and access to the right mix of incentives and materials.

“The battery and EV markets are growing exponentially and there is a race among global players to capture the market,” said Abdul Razak Jendi with Kingston Economic Development Corporation. “Choosing the right site for expansion is vital for success and we believe that Kingston is a frontrunner among Canadian cities in what it offers to companies in the battery manufacturing and EV space.”

Situated along Canada’s busiest highway, Kingston at the centre of the country’s most densely populated belt stretching from Windsor to Québec – home to a third of Canada’s population and touching many of its automotive manufacturing facilities.

Kingston’s prime location, the research and talent emerging from its three postsecondary institutions (Queen’s University, St. Lawrence College, and Royal Military College), and the long-time presence of research and development facilities for DuPont and Novelis has resulted in the city having one of the highest densities of chemical process experts in the country.

“Companies such as Dupont & Novelis here spawned businesses like a dandelion blowing seeds around, spreading skilled abilities in aluminum alloying and casting throughout the community and attracting businesses to Kingston,” said Boyd Davis, President of Kingston Process Metallurgy (KPM). “Between that local metal knowledge and Kingston’s location near the population centre of Canada, it’s a great place for a regional or national hub

to help service lightweighting of electric vehicles.”

Kingston has already had some success in turning its natural advantages into business success for EV-related businesses.

When Li-Cycle needed support to refine and improve its lithium-ion battery recycling technology, it turned to two Kingston-based organizations for help: GreenCentre Canada, an organization that provides specialized technical services to companies developing sustainable chemistry-based technologies; and KPM. Thanks to that partnership, Li-Cycle was able to scale up their process and commercialize in a very short time, allowing it to become the North American leader in li-ion battery recycling, including its first commercial plant in Kingston which was fully commissioned in the summer of 2019.

“Bringing our economically and environmentally sustainable lithium-ion battery recycling technologies to Kingston was a significant accomplishment for LiCycle,” said Ajay Kochhar, Li-Cycle Cofounder, President, and CEO. “Our facility is close to a substantial supply of end-oflife batteries and battery manufacturing scrap, which optimizes our supply chain and reduces the environmental impact of transporting materials.”

The partnership has also been positive for KPM, which has since launched its own accelerator and is working on an advanced battery project with a Britishbased client along with a number other start-ups in the chem-tech space.

Businesses like Li-Cycle, meanwhile, have further been able to pair Kingston’s strong natural assets with federal government programs such as its Net

Zero Accelerator, an initiative intended to speed up decarbonization efforts, and with Canada’s natural deposits of lithium, graphite, cobalt, and nickel. Couple these assets with government incentives for consumers to purchase EVs and a recent purchase of thousands of electric buses, and the market for businesses supporting the EV sector is set for success in Kingston and in Canada.

“Whether companies are looking to start a pilot project, take on full-scale manufacturing to capture some of the new business emerging from the growing EV sector, or work with the talent emerging locally, we would love to engage and explore opportunities,” added Jendi.

To learn more about how you can supercharge your business investment in Kingston, visit InvestKingston.ca.

STAY, PLAY, DINE AND EXPLORE Get closer to what you love in Kingston – the beautiful sights, culinary delights, charming accommodations and memorable adventures.

Rediscover Kingston.

visitkingston.ca/closer

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12/10/21 3:03 PM

YOUR BUSINESS BELONGS HERE ▶ 44 CANADIAN RESEARCH CHAIRS

For investment inquiries contact:

▶ 30+ LABORATORIES AND RESEARCH FACILITIES

BEN MCILQUHAM

▶ SMARTEST WORKFORCE IN CANADA WITH THE MOST PHD GRADUATES ▶ HEALTHCARE AND LIFE SCIENCES ARE THE FASTEST GROWING SECTOR IN KINGSTON

Investment Manager, Health Innovation Kingston Economic Development Corporation 613-532-1853 KingstonEcDev.com

@KingstonEcDev