MaRS

Ryerson's Digital Media Zone (DMZ) is looking to find the inner Silicon Valley innovator within Ryerson's student body by creating a space where entrepreneurs can collaborate and receive support. Sue McGill, an advisor at MaRS, has toured the DMZ and shares her views.

The booming brain-fitness industry hopes to help with computer puzzles designed to sharpen your mental power. Baycrest and MaRS launched a company, Cogniciti, that aims to develop brain fitness products based on scientific principles introduced by the Rotman team.

Dr. Cal Stiller, who was recently named a recipient of a prestigious Canada Gairdner Award, fielded questions from readers in an online discussion.

agriculture "venture capital"

Hon. John Milloy, Minister of Research and Innovation and Minister of Training, Colleges and Univesities, states "Ontario has big expectations and goals for the life sciences industry and commercialization." MaRS is an innovation centre in Toronto.

Vincent Cheung of Shape Collage, recent winner of the MaRS Up-Start Competition, was also named national champion for an award by the Advancing Canadian Entrepreneurship (ACE) organization. Congrats to Shape Collage, a MaRS client.

Tom Rand, Cleantech Lead at MaRS and author of Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World says "we can make the largest investment in infrastructure in human history by building a low-carbon economy... We can start to build that infrastructure on our own timetable, or we can wait for nature to dictate the terms."

Vincent Cheung is a recipient of the Advancing Canadian Entrepreneur (ACE) 2010 National Student Champion 2010. Cheung had no business background till he attended MaRS Entrepreneurship 101 course.

Cross Media NYC will take place July 21, 2010 and is partnering with the Mars Centre and the Canadian Film Centre's (CFC) Media Lab. This event will feature media industry executives discussing perspectives on how transmedia content will be produced, distributed and consumed in a cross media environment, specifically looking at ways to incorporate cross media into business models.

Miller Thomson LLP has announced a multi-faceted partnership with MaRS Discovery District. The partnership gives Miller Thomson an ongoing, collaborative presence at MaRS, providing counsel in business-critical areas such as business planning, finance, intellectual property management, and go-to-market strategies.

Dr Ilse Treurnicht, chief executive of the MaRS innovation centre in Toronto, denies Canada lacks entrepreneurial spirit. "Our entrepreneurial ecosystem is younger so what we miss are the serial entrepreneurs who have started four or five companies," she says. "We still build our young tech companies with first-time entrepreneurs and inexperienced management teams, so a big part of what we do is to try and give them the right support so they can be successful and go on to become serial entrepreneurs."

A local affordable condominium development partners with SiG@MaRS client Home Ownership Alternatives, a non-profit financial company that potential homebuyers on the edge of the market

Kevin Stolarick has a four-point plan to make Atlantic Canada grow. The research director of Toronto's Martin Prosperity Institute says his process is not an easy fix of the region's trend of so-called brain drain, but he can offer some lessons from his travels.

The Ontario Genomics Institute (OGI) teamed up with Invitrogen Corporation, a California-based global leader in providing life sciences technology, recently to host Genome 2.0: New Frontiers in Epigenomics, a one-day symposium addressing epigenetic regulation of gene expression with a special focus on chromatin biology, DNA methylation, non-coding RNAs and technology development.

Through his private venture fund, new book and position at MaRS, Tom has been busy making a meaningful impact on individuals and leading MaRS - Canada's clean tech cluster - to 4th in worldwide rankings. Using his social and financial capital, Tom Rand is a Clean Leader.

"Toronto-based engineer and venture capitalist Tom Rand has come out with what I'd call the most important book of the year. Kick The Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World is a flashy five-pound coffee table book available everywhere. Instead of photos of Renaissance art or horses, it features glossy spreads of giant solar farms, geothermal energy installations and state-of-the-art wind complexes. It's weirdly beautiful. Not because geothermal energy installations are gorgeous. It's thrilling to finally see so many potential solutions to the gravest and most intractable problems laid out so clearly."

Last summer, Toronto-based MaRS, a not-for-profit innovation centre, launched its "Angel" program with the help of Canaccord Genuity. A year later, there have been five Angel events and about half of the program's 15 members have received some form of funding.

A directory of information for Ontario government tax credits, incentives and programs for business. Search about 60 programs across 11 different ministries in one spot.

Architect Ivan Saleff's recent adaptive revamp of a mildly modern Forest Hill home is a marriage of distinct parts, in similar fashion to the ROM's Michael Lee-Chin Crystal or the MaRS Centre.

Article about Tom Rand's geothermally cooled, solar-powered hostel