Media Releases

Rotman MBA Student Honoured as Rising Star in Global Health

February 13, 2012

TORONTO, ON – A stu­dent in the Morn­ing MBA pro­gram at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment has been hon­oured as a ris­ing star in glob­al health.

Dr. Karim S. Karim, who is also an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Water­loo, received a $100,000 grant last week from Grand Chal­lenges Cana­da to pur­sue his work on a device for rapid tuber­cu­lo­sis detec­tion through dig­i­tal imag­ing, a low-cost and effec­tive diag­nos­tic.

The grant was one of only 15, val­ued in total at more than $1.5 mil­lion, award­ed to some of Canada’s most cre­ative inno­va­tors from across the coun­try in sup­port of their work to improve glob­al health con­di­tions.

“Glob­al health, par­tic­u­lar­ly when relat­ed to eas­i­ly com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases like tuber­cu­lo­sis, is a prob­lem that the devel­oped world can­not afford to ignore,” said Dr. Karim.  “Tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment has far out­paced tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer ini­tia­tives espe­cial­ly in the health­care field; Grand Chal­lenges Cana­da offers a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to inno­vate new ways to bring basic health­care tech­nol­o­gy that we take for grant­ed here in Cana­da to parts of the world where it is sore­ly need­ed.”  

Dr. Karim enrolled in the Rot­man Morn­ing MBA pro­gram in 2009 and received the 2009 CIHR Sci­ence to Busi­ness Fel­low­ship. Ear­li­er in his career he was the recip­i­ent of the 2008 Ontario Ear­ly Researcher Award, the 2004 NSERC Doc­tor­al Prize and CAGS/UMI Award for the Best Doc­tor­al The­sis in Sci­ence and Med­i­cine in Cana­da for his work on large area dig­i­tal med­ical imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy. His research group at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Water­loo is inves­ti­gat­ing large-area cir­cuit, device and process devel­op­ment using amor­phous sele­ni­um, poly­crys­talline sil­i­con and CMOS semi­con­duc­tor tech­nolo­gies. He received his PhD from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Water­loo in 2002.

“When you look at the range of inno­va­tions and the poten­tial those cre­ative ideas have to make a dif­fer­ence, Cana­di­ans can’t help but be proud of our coun­try’s con­tri­bu­tion to the health and well-being of the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty,” said Dr. Peter A. Singer, CEO of Grand Chal­lenges Cana­da. “Bold Cana­di­an ideas with big impact can save lives.”

The grantees were select­ed through a rig­or­ous peer review process. Among the cri­te­ria the pro­pos­als need­ed to meet were Grand Chal­lenges Canada’s Inte­grat­ed Inno­va­tion approach, which smoothes the path to imple­men­ta­tion of the dis­cov­ery. Inno­va­tors must con­sid­er eth­i­cal and cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers, the health sys­tems required to deliv­er the dis­cov­er­ies and the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of their solu­tions so that they can be dis­trib­uted to the peo­ple who need them, cost-effec­tive­ly.

Dr. Karim may be eli­gi­ble for an addi­tion­al Grand Chal­lenges Cana­da scale-up grant of $1 mil­lion.

Grand Chal­lenges Cana­da is fund­ed by the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da through the Devel­op­ment Inno­va­tion Fund announced in the 2008 Fed­er­al Bud­get and is host­ed at the San­dra Rot­man Cen­tre for Glob­al Health at the  Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to and Uni­ver­si­ty Health Net­work. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it grandchallenges.ca

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is redesign­ing busi­ness edu­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry with a cur­ricu­lum based on Inte­gra­tive Think­ing. Locat­ed in the world’s most diverse city, the Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables the design of cre­ative busi­ness solu­tions.  The School is cur­rent­ly rais­ing $200 mil­lion to ensure Cana­da has the world-class busi­ness school it deserves. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion:

Ken McGuf­fin

Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions

Rot­man School of Man­age­ment

Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to

Voice 416.946.3818

E‑mail mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca

Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter — www.twitter.com/rotmanschool