Media Releases

Canadian Scientists and Organizations Honoured for Their Impact by University of Toronto’s Creative Destruction Lab

October 25, 2017

Toron­to, ON – Orga­ni­za­tions and researchers whose work has had an impact on Cana­di­an com­pet­i­tive­ness in the areas of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy and com­merce have been hon­oured with the third annu­al awards pre­sent­ed by the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab (CDL) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment.

The awards are designed around the pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ents in the pre­vail­ing mod­els of eco­nom­ics growth: labour, cap­i­tal and ideas.

The 2017 recip­i­ent of the Cap­i­tal Award is the Indus­tri­al Research Assis­tance Pro­gram (IRAP) which pro­vides non-dilu­tive cap­i­tal to small and medi­um sized enter­pris­es in Cana­da to accel­er­ate their tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion.  Many Cana­di­an high-tech entre­pre­neurs point to the crit­i­cal role IRAP played in their devel­op­ment.

The 2017 recip­i­ent of the Labour award is the Perime­ter Insti­tute, an inde­pen­dent research cen­ter in foun­da­tion­al the­o­ret­i­cal physics in Water­loo, Ontario. Its mis­sion is to advance the under­stand­ing of the uni­verse at the most fun­da­men­tal lev­el. The Insti­tute trains the next gen­er­a­tion of physi­cists through uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, sum­mer research projects, and oth­er research oppor­tu­ni­ties for PhD stu­dents and grad­u­ate fel­lows.

The 2017 joint recip­i­ents of Ideas award are Doina Pre­cup, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor in the School of Com­put­er Sci­ence at McGill Uni­ver­si­ty, and Gra­ham Collinridge, a UofT pro­fes­sor, who holds the Ernest B. and Leonard B. Smith Chair in the Depart­ment of Phys­i­ol­o­gy. Both recip­i­ents have advanced our knowl­edge of learn­ing; Prof. Pre­cup in the area of rein­force­ment learn­ing and Prof. Collingridge on the phys­i­ol­o­gy of mem­o­ry and learn­ing. Their con­tri­bu­tions have laid foun­da­tions for fur­ther research on how machines and brains enhance their per­for­mance through learn­ing.

The awards will be pre­sent­ed at a con­fer­ence at the Rot­man School on Octo­ber 26 host­ed by the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Bloomberg Beta, on the eco­nom­ics of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence called “Machine Learn­ing and the Mar­ket for Intel­li­gence.”  The focus of the con­fer­ence is on the busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties and eco­nom­ic impli­ca­tions aris­ing from recent advances in machine intel­li­gence. The pre­sent­ing spon­sor of the con­fer­ence is Sco­tia­bank and the knowl­edge part­ner is McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny.  Fur­ther details on the con­fer­ence are online at www.marketforintelligence.com.

The Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab is a seed-stage pro­gram for mas­sive­ly scal­able, sci­ence-based ven­tures. It employs a unique, objec­tives-focused coach­ing process to help founders com­mer­cial­ize advances in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. The Lab also pro­vides expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing to Rot­man MBA stu­dents through year-long cours­es where stu­dents work along­side the Lab’s Fel­lows and ven­ture founders, giv­ing them a unique chance to learn how to eval­u­ate, finance, and man­age tech­nol­o­gy busi­ness­es.

Grad­u­ates of the Lab include Thalmic Labs (Water­loo), Atom­wise (San Fran­cis­co), Deep Genomics (Toron­to), Nymi (Toron­to), Automat (Mon­tre­al), Kyn­di (Palo Alto), and Heuritech (Paris). The Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab was found­ed in 2012 at the Rot­man School and now has addi­tion­al pro­grams at the UBC Saud­er School of Busi­ness, the Haskayne School of Busi­ness at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary, HEC Mon­tre­al and Dal­housie Uni­ver­si­ty. A new pro­gram will launch at the Stern School of Busi­ness at New York Uni­ver­si­ty in 2018. This year the Lab in Toron­to launched a new pro­gram focused on the cre­ation of quan­tum machine learn­ing star­tups.  More infor­ma­tion is avail­able at www.creativedestructionlab.com.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment is locat­ed in the heart of Canada’s com­mer­cial and cul­tur­al cap­i­tal and is part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, one of the world’s top 20 research uni­ver­si­ties. The Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables our grad­u­ates to tack­le today’s glob­al busi­ness and soci­etal chal­lenges.  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
Tel: 416–946-3818
E‑mail: mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca