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the country's most significant collection of scientific and medical researchers.

This week, a program called MaRS Innovation announced the appointment of its first full-time president, Raphael (Rafi) Hofstein, a Harvard-trained, Israeli biomedical wizard who wants to bring together companies, scientists and funding under one roof to create a special alchemy of science and shekels.

Since its inception, MaRS has focused on turning big ideas into commercial projects. The difference between the two entities is that pretty much anyone with an idea or discovery could come to MaRS for support, regardless of whether they had their “eureka” moment in a state-of-the-art research lab or in their garage. MaRS Innovation, a separate endeavour with its own board of directors, only works with researchers from its 14 partner institutions, which include some of the most prestigious universities and hospitals in Canada. The goal of that project is to do the kind of work those institutions would normally try to do in-house, but on a bigger scale and, the project's backers hope, with better results.

MaRS Innovation is very much in its infancy. Officially launched last June, the project is barely a year old, and the board of directors was only announced this February. It has secured about $25-million in funding over five years to be used for commercialization of projects.

Dr. Hofstein is giving himself two to three years to roll out a success story – be it the creation of a new small company founded on the back of a researcher's drug discovery and funded by a big pharmaceutical firm, or a new discovery that, packaged properly, attracts serious venture-capital money.

The federal government has also taken notice, naming MaRS Innovation as one of 11 new “Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research,” a designation that came with almost $15-million in funding.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks at MaRs with Premier Dalton McGuinty after a tour of the building in 2007.

Indeed, the MaRS Innovation model of pushing for commercial applications of research seems to be directly in line with the philosophy of the Conservative government, which clearly favours practical results when it comes to funding for scientific research.

But those tasks involve two separate skill sets, Mr. Tabrizi suggests, and may be much better suited to a place such as MaRS, where academic and industry heavyweights converge.

Many of MaRS's biggest partners are in health care, and Dr. Hofstein is jumping in with a list of priorities that includes focusing on stem-cell research and oncology.

MaRS itself has always been good at bringing people from various sectors together, but there's no guarantee that Dr. Hofstein's plan will work, especially in the two-to-three-year timeline he mentions when talking about a rollout date for the first MaRS Innovation projects.

Indeed, Mr. Tabrizi says some Silicon Valley insiders marvel at what MaRS Innovation is trying to do. “I think there's something innovative there,” he says. “Something different is being done.”

resented by the Social Innovation Generation team at MaRS (SiG@MaRS), Net Change Week will tap into the potential that exists when new methods of communicating, organizing and mobilizing are brought to bear on chronic social issues. ”

resented by the Social Innovation Generation team at MaRS (SiG@MaRS), Net Change Week will tap into the potential that exists when new methods of communicating, organizing and mobilizing are brought to bear on chronic social issues. ”

next month in Toronto, “a week-long event designed to explore how social technology can bolster social change

social and environmental change

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.

Skymeter solution solves severe GPS signal problems among numerous intersecting and parallel side-roads and offers a high degree of billing accuracy, critical to system acceptance. Skymeter is currently being tested in San Francisco against what are considered to be the best GPS receivers in North America. The results of these tests to date mirror successful European and Asian trials of Skymeter's system.

Skymeter Corporation is a Toronto, Canada-based data services operator that enables location-based payments using financial-grade GPS telematics. Its billing-delivery services include Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) metering for road use, parking and PAYD insurance. These services incorporate methodologies for both privacy and anonymity to ensure motorists enjoy complete privacy while traveling and absolute confidentiality of their trips. Skymeter is equivalent to an anonymous, in-car cell-phone that automatically pays for all transport services based on actual usage. Skymeter enables every form of road-use charging from small city areas such as London and Stockholm's cordon charges up to metering every vehicle in a state, province or country in order to replace fuel taxes.

The Premier’s Catalyst Awards help build a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in Ontario by recognizing excellence and leadership in innovation. The Premier’s Discovery Awards celebrates the research excellence of Ontario’s most accomplished researchers. The third category, the Premier’s Summit Award is administered by MaRS.