Group items tagged

W. Geoffrey Beattie – Deputy Chairman & President, Woodbridge Company Limited, Thomson Reuters Corporation, Toronto Christopher C. Capelli – Vice President, Technology Based Ventures, Office of Technology Commercialization, University of Texas, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX Ron Close – Information technology entrepreneur, Entrepreneur-in-Residence, MaRS, and Executive Entrepreneur-in-Residence, The Richard Ivey School of Business, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON Nicholas Darby – Formerly Director of Physical Sciences, Corporate Venture Capital, Dow Chemical Company, President, Darby & Associates Consulting LLC, Midland, MI  Mary Jo Haddad – President & CEO, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto Jacqueline H.R. Le Saux – Former General Counsel, North America and Corporate Secretary, Patheon, Inc., Toronto David A. Leslie - Chair, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and Former Chairman & CEO, Ernst & Young, Toronto Michael H. May – President & CEO, Rimon Therapeutics, Toronto Chandra J. Panchal – Founder, President & CEO, Axcelon Biopolymers Corp., Dollard-des-Ormeaux, QC Ilse Treurnicht – CEO, MaRS Discovery District, Toronto Donald A. Wright – President & CEO, The Winnington Capital Group Inc., Toronto

MaRS Innovation serves as a business accelerator platform with a single point of entry for industry partners and investors.  It will increase the scale, scope and viability of IP offerings, and the quantity and quality of deal flow from partner institutions.  MaRS Innovation will also facilitate strategic research collaborations with industry partners, strengthen the innovation capacity of Canadian industry through adoption of new technologies from its member institutions, and launch a new generation of robust, high-growth Canadian companies that will become global market leaders.   The quality of the combined discovery pipeline will catalyze and attract sources of risk capital for translational research, market validation, company formation and growth.  “MaRS Innovation represents a unique and timely platform to contribute in a meaningful way to Canada’s knowledge economy, leveraging Toronto’s remarkable research excellence.  The vision and serious commitment of its members to work together to transform our commercialization results, and the support of the Federal Government, made this possible.  The announcement of this outstanding group of leaders to the Board of Directors for MaRS Innovation is an exciting step forward,” said Ilse Treurnicht, MaRS CEO and interim Managing Director of MaRS Innovation.

"MaRS Innovation is a unique global initiative, and I must commend the institutional leaders in Toronto for pulling this innovation powerhouse together to strengthen commercialization output. In my experience, good science is the single most important ingredient for success in this business. Toronto is already known as one of the strongest science cities in the world, and it continues to grow. Leading MaRS Innovation is a wonderful opportunity to do something remarkable."

Dr. Tim McTiernan, assistant vice-president (research) and executive director of The Innovations Group (TIG), U of T's research commercialization operation, said Mars Innovation will provide significant benefits to U of T.

And he said that MI's role as a resource "is like putting a turbo charger on an engine. Having MI working with us and the other member organizations is a huge step in taking advantage of the enormous potential in the Toronto research community. Commercialization offices acting independently will not be able to manage in nearly as effective a manner as will be possible with the expertise of MaRS Innovation."