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The Ivey Centre for Health Innovation and Leadership was launched this year with a $5-million push from the Canadian government. The latest Ivey initiative has the goal of bringing students together with experts from the science and business sectors, with the ultimate goal of better identifying and commercializing health technologies.Dr. Kellie Leitch, a Hospital for Sick Children orthopedic surgeon, is the first executive director of the centre, which is based at Western.

She is sitting in the basement of MaRS, a scientific hub of activity in downtown Toronto where labs, business and major Toronto teaching hospitals are brought together under one roof.

The Ivey centre will focus on giving the educational capability to our students so they become really well educated in innovation and commercialization, so we can keep things here at home in Canada and grow those products."

Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District has combined the creative genius of science and technology with the drive of entrepreneurs and capital to create a marriage that will see more Canadian ideas commercialized in this country and for those efforts it has won the Canadian Urban Institute’s 2009 Creative City Award to be granted to MaRS on June 5 at the Urban Leadership Awards in Toronto.

“MaRS has found a creative way for science and business to collaborate rather than compete and to help Canada become a knowledge-based economy. This award recognizes them as a leader in stimulating the creative capacity of the city and advancing entrepreneurship, not only in science and technology but also in social ventures. 

Located in the Discovery District of Toronto, where billions of dollars of creative capital are created every year, the MaRS Centre first opened in 2005 in two new towers that bookend a heritage building that once housed the Toronto General Hospital. The three buildings, that total 700,000 sq. ft, house labs, companies of all sizes, business advisors and investors. Its professional services include hands-on advisory services, entrepreneurial programming and both structured and electronic networking. A second building phase of the MaRS Centre will add 750,000 sq ft and is planned to open in the next few years. “The underlining reason for creating MaRS is to capture the value of Canadian discoveries and to better commercialize these innovations at home in Canada,” said MaRS CEO Ilse Treurnicht. “Hub cities like Toronto are key drivers in shaping Canada’s innovation economy. MaRS works to strengthen the pull of that hub, acting as an accelerator and building the best ideas into companies that can compete on the world stage but are anchored here,” said Treurnicht.

MaRS Centre, Toronto, Ontario: The Creative City Award for building creative capacity.

Canadian Urban Institute’s Urban Leadership Awards June 5 in Toronto.

The CUI has judged dozens of nominations from across Canada and selected 18 exceptional “city builders” who tackle everything from reducing poverty in Hamilton and homelessness in Vancouver to beautifying historic riverbanks in Quebec and showcasing children’s art on buses in Toronto.

MobileMonday Toronto and MaRS are delighted to announce a partnership to develop and host a range of dynamic events for the city’s mobile industry professionals. MobileMonday at MaRS will offer thought leadership and critical industry perspectives – most recently from a senior manager at Research in Motion – while connecting top-tier professionals and boosting the profile of one of the fastest-growing sectors of communications technology.

“MaRS is a fantastic environment for sharing ideas and industry knowledge, two key building blocks of the MobileMonday community,” said Jim Brown and Alexander S. Bosika, co-founders of the MobileMonday Toronto chapter. “MaRS and its network of business advisors and capital providers are also of great benefit to many of our members who are developing business plans and seeking capital.”

For MaRS, the partnership is a natural fit with great potential to benefit the hundreds of start-up clients from across Ontario who are working hard to turn their innovative concepts into viable, thriving businesses, and come to MaRS for advice and connections to potential customers and investors. 

The event will mark the official opening of the new WORLDiscoveries office at MaRS.   WORLDiscoveries is a joint business development consortium formed between Western, Robarts and Lawson Health Research Institute to bridge local inventions and global industry.  

The MaRS Discovery District is a non-profit innovation centre that connects science, technology and entrepreneurs with business skills, networks and capital to stimulate innovation and accelerate the growth of successful Canadian enterprise

Ontario is launching a new fund to attract and retain world-leading genomics researchers in the province. The CAD$100-million (£56.1-million) Global Leadership Round in Genomics and Life Sciences will support globally-significant, collaborative research projects that are headquartered in Ontario, Canada. This fund will create high-skilled jobs in research and technology, and brings Ontario`s commitment to funding science since 2003 to a historic high of $1.4 billion (£785 million).