Research Spotlight: Technology and Healthcare

Direct-to-consumer genetic testing, affordable virtual reality gaming for home use, AI-enabled home appliances and mRNA vaccines developed in quick response to a global pandemic have become part of daily life.

These technologies are among those revolutionizing the way healthcare is delivered and are giving rise to innovative and productive collaborations between clinicians, biologists, computer scientists and industry.

mRNA Technology

In 2023, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded jointly to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their discoveries that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. As noted by the Nobel Prize organization, “Through their ground-breaking findings, which have fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system, the laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times.”

Although messenger RNA, or mRNA, was discovered in the early 1960s and research into how mRNA could be delivered into cells was developed in the 1970s, it wasn’t until 2020, when COVID-19 became a global pandemic, that the first mRNA vaccine was made widely available. Thanks to advances in nanotechnology, where lipid nanoparticles were developed to wrap mRNA and allow entry into cells, the first mRNA vaccines were developed against the Ebola virus. This milestone, combined with decades of research and huge increases in funding released during the pandemic, allowed for the worldwide release of the first mRNA COVID vaccine.

Because mRNA vaccines are made in a lab using easily available materials, these vaccines are developed quickly and can be tested via large-scale clinical trials to demonstrate their safety and effectiveness. These vaccines can also be quickly modified to address new virus variants.

The ability to quickly develop very effective vaccines through the use of mRNA for COVID has spurred the development of additional mRNA vaccines for use in HIV, flu, Zika, rabies and to trigger the immune system to target cancer cells.

Virtual Reality/VR

American computer scientist and visual artist Jaron Lanier coined the term “virtual reality” in 1987.  Lanier and human-computer interaction pioneer Thomas G. Zimmerman left Atari in 1985 to found VPL Research, the first company to sell VR goggles and wired gloves. 

VR provides an immersive sensory experience that digitally simulates environments for applications in entertainment, education, architectural and urban design, engineering and robotics, archaeology and, increasingly, healthcare. Researchers and clinicians are exploring the use of VR to manage psychological and physical conditions including stress, anxiety, depression, dementia, autism, pain management and rehabilitation.

Healthcare providers have sought alternatives to opioids to address chronic pain as opioid addiction and death has become a worldwide crisis. In 2021, the US Food and Drug Administration authorized the marketing of a prescription home-use VR device to manage chronic low back pain.

At the Pain Studies Lab at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Dr. Diane Gromala, Canada Research Chair in Computational Technologies for Transforming Pain, leads a research group that conducts patient-centred research to study, invent and design technology systems for people who live with chronic pain. Systems and techniques employed in clinics and in patients’ homes include immersive virtual reality, immersive games, personal data capture and visualization, physiological sensing, wearable computing and mobile technologies and systems.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), anxiety disorders are the world’s most common mental disorders, affecting 301 million people in 2019.  The WHO predicts that by 2030, mental health conditions will be the leading cause of disease burden worldwide. Anxiety has traditionally been treated by a combination of psychotherapy and medication. Virtual reality is now being integrated with traditional therapies, safely immersing patients in a therapeutic environment to practice mindfulness, paced breathing and calming distraction to cope with anxiety and stress. 

Virtual Reality for Supporting the Treatment of Depression and Anxiety: Scoping Review, a paper by researchers in New Zealand and China published in the peer-reviewed journal JMIR Mental Health in 2021 noted: “Most studies demonstrated the use of VR to be effective for supporting the treatment of anxiety or depression in a range of settings and recommended its potential as a tool for use in a clinical environment.”

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

From disease detection and treatment recommendations to drug discovery and patient engagement, AI and machine learning promise to be game changers in healthcare. At the same time, governments around the world are concerned about the risks of AI. Representatives from 28 countries from across the globe including Canada, the UK, the US, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the EU met in the UK in November 2023 and identified, in the Bletchley Declaration, “the urgent need to understand and collectively manage potential risks through a new joint global effort to ensure that AI is developed and deployed in a safe, responsible way for the benefit of the global community.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) has noted that AI tools have the potential to transform the health sector by strengthening clinical trials, improving medical diagnosis and treatment and enhancing the skills of healthcare professionals. In response to the increasing use of AI for health, the WHO has released a new publication listing key regulatory considerations and emphasizing:

  • the importance of establishing AI systems’ safety and effectiveness;
  • rapidly making appropriate systems available to those who need them; and
  • fostering dialogue among stakeholders, including developers, regulators, manufacturers, health workers, and patients.

Enhancing the reliability and accuracy of AI-enabled diagnosis via complementarity-driven deferral to clinicians, a joint paper by Google DeepMind and Google Research published in Nature Medicine in July 2023, proposes Complementarity-driven Deferral-to-Clinical Workflow (CoDoC), an add-on tool for human-AI collaboration that learns when to trust a predictive AI’s diagnosis or defer to a clinician. CoDoC learns to establish the reliability of a predictive AI model as compared to a clinician’s decision and is designed to be used by non-machine learning experts. 

According to Krishnamurthy Dvijotham and Taylan Cemgil, on behalf of the CoDoC team, “CoDoC is a promising example of how we can harness the benefits of AI in combination with human strengths and expertise. We are working with external partners to rigorously evaluate our research and the system’s potential benefits. To bring technology like CoDoC safely to real-world medical settings, healthcare providers and manufacturers will also have to understand how clinicians interact differently with AI, and validate systems with specific medical AI tools and settings.”

An example of the use of AI to bring information to patients is AskEllyn.ai, which launched last week in Waterloo. The platform uses generative artificial intelligence to help people get answers to their questions about breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. AskEllyn was developed by Ellyn Winters-Robinson, using stories from her book Flat Please – Hold The Shame as the base for its large language model, in collaboration with Pat Belliveau, CEO of Catalyst Entertainment, marketing pro Ryan Burgio and software developer Christian Silvestru. For external resources, Winters-Robinson curated a list of third-party sites that the tool will recommend. Users are able to chat with Ellyn anytime, anywhere, and in any language to ask questions ranging from what to expect from chemotherapy to how to speak with friends and family about a diagnosis.

“AskEllyn is there to answer the thousands of questions patients have that doctors simply don’t have the time to answer,” says Winters-Robinson. She envisions the project as the first instance of Conversation Care, a new kind of healthcare that could include platforms for information about a range of conditions “so that no one diagnosed will ever walk alone,” she says.

Precision Medicine

Precision or personalized medicine is defined by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as “an innovative approach that takes into account individual differences in patients’ genes, environments, and lifestyles.”

This approach to treatment is applied by oncologists to classify cancers into precise types and subtypes and to choose treatments based on the DNA signature of an individual patient’s tumor. Oncologists also use cancer immunotherapy through the use of the patient’s immune system to stop or slow the growth of cancer, stop cancer from spreading to other parts of the body, help the immune system work better to destroy cancer cells and deliver toxins, such as radiation or chemotherapy, directly to cancer cells.

Another form of precision medicine is pharmacogenetics, a field of research at the crossroads of pharmaceuticals and genetics and a rapidly growing field in human genetics. Pharmacogenetics studies how a person’s genes affect how they respond to medications in order to help clinicians prescribe the drugs and doses best suited for each patient. Pharmacogenetics is also expected to contribute to advanced screening for disease, providing people with the opportunity to make lifestyle and environmental changes at an early age in order to avoid or lessen the severity of a genetic disease.

Precision medicine is also emerging as a course for identifying therapies for the 6,000–8,000 identified unique rare diseases, with approximately 80% of those diseases being genetic in origin. According to the paper Rare disease emerging as a global public health priority, published in Frontiers of Public Health in 2022, 3.5–5.9% of the world’s population, which corresponds to 263 to 446 million people worldwide, are affected by rare diseases.

In Canada, All for One, a pan-Canadian initiative, was launched in 2022 to increase access to genome-wide sequencing for diagnosis and treatment of genetic diseases. Led by Genome Canada, the initiative provides access to genome-wide sequencing for diagnosis and treatment of life-threatening genetic diseases. A key component of the All for One precision health initiative is the development of a Pan-Canadian Health Data Ecosystem, which connects and leverages genomic data across clinical sites to drive research breakthroughs in order to improve patient care. The ecosystem will enable data sharing between institutions, across jurisdictional boundaries, and between clinical and research settings, serving as a data solution to deliver precision health for rare genetic diseases.

In the US, Vertex Exa-cel therapy, a treatment and potential cure for sickle cell disease has been found safe enough for clinical use and may receive federal approval this year. Sickle cell disease, an illness that afflicts more than 100,000 Americans, affects millions of people worldwide, most of whom have African ancestry. Caused by a gene mutation, the disease results in strokes, organ damage and episodes of severe pain. If approved, this treatment would be the first medicine to treat a genetic disease using CRISPR gene-editing.

Researcher Spotlight: Laura Hopkins

Dr. Laura Hopkins 
Gynecologic Oncologist, Saskatchewan Cancer Agency
Professor, College of Medicine, Division of Oncology, University of Saskatchewan 
Provincial Lead for Gynecologic Oncology

Laura Hopkins always knew she wanted to be a doctor. Growing up on a beef cattle farm north of Napanee, Ontario, she enjoyed sewing, knitting and making lace. She attributes her proficiency as a surgeon to the eye-hand coordination she developed doing these crafts.

After completing medical school at the University of Toronto, Laura trained as a resident at McMaster University, where evidence-based medicine was first practiced.  Described as one of the most important medical advances in the past 150 years, evidence-based medicine integrates the best research data with clinical expertise and patient values in order to use the best evidence to give patients the best possible care. Laura wanted to focus on clinical care and loved doing quality assurance projects to answer questions about how patient care could be improved. Her work to acquire evidence on how the use of antibiotics prior to cesarean delivery and the prophylactic prescription of anti-clotting agents for all cancer in-patients improved infection and clot rates was very rewarding – for Laura and for the patients who benefitted from these projects.

Laura sampled the field of electives during her residency and it was an obstetrician-gynecologist who served as the role model that led her to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology.  “She was the first happy doctor I had met,” says Laura. “I never looked back after working with her.” 

Laura was on a path to a career as a generalist obstetrician-gynecologist when she was encouraged to apply for a fellowship in gynecologic oncology. Gynecologic oncologists treat ovarian, cervical, uterine, and vulvar cancers and are a unique class of physicians who not only perform complex surgeries but also work with women through their entire course of treatment, including chemotherapy and palliative support. She was accepted to the program at the University of Toronto and says, “It was the right decision and best choice for me. There is immediate gratification in getting rid of a bad problem for a patient through surgery.”

Laura was recruited to Saskatchewan in September 2019 after 18 years at the Ottawa Hospital and the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. During her tenure at the University of Ottawa, she published papers, participated in committee work and served as undergraduate director, post-graduate director and division head. After almost two decades of this work, she looked for a change from the focus on medical education and started doing locums, covering for physicians on leave in Halifax and Saskatoon.

In late 2018, Saskatoon lost both of its gynecological oncologists due to exhausting workloads that resulted in burnout. Another resigned in Regina in June 2019, leaving just one permanent gynecological oncologist practicing in Saskatchewan. When the province began recruiting new physicians, Laura expressed interest and was hired as program lead to create a provincial model of care guidelines, quality improvement initiatives and clinical trials. She set up clinical programs in Saskatoon and Regina, and hired five additional gynecological oncologists to staff those programs. She opened clinical trials for women with cancer for the first time in Saskatchewan, achieved the best surgical wait times for gynecologic cancer in Canada, and inaugurated a robotic surgery program. With research funding provided by the federal government, matched by the provincial government and made available through Ovarian Cancer Canada, Laura set up a biobank for ovarian tumor tissue and an academic program.

In September 2023, Laura launched the Saskatchewan Cancer Agency’s first investigator-initiated trial. This is the first pragmatic trial in Canada that will feature patients, oncologists, pathologists and scientists working together to deliver personalized treatment options and improve quality of life. Ovarian cancer patients’ tumors will be tested for mutations that predict response to a new class of drugs, providing accurate, personalized, genomic information about each patient’s tumor and helping patients make informed choices about their care. A total of 100 patients from across Saskatchewan will be enrolled in the 2.5-year trial. “For the first time, we will be able to give ovarian cancer patients very specific information about their chances of responding to treatment,” notes Laura. “When I was in training, we used to talk about “bench to bedside” and cutting-edge care. But I was trained to guess about what chemo drugs were going to work and in what order to administer those drugs. Now we work with scientists who can run a 1,200-drug panel against cancer cells to find the right drugs to kill those cells.”

Laura Hopkins holds nearly $5 million in active research grants spanning surgical quality and safety, precision medicine and new technologies in oncofertility. She is a clinician, educator, researcher and successful leader in building a strong gynecological oncology clinical and research program and team in Saskatchewan. Patient care remains her priority. “My passion is to provide excellent, compassionate, timely care for my patients through all stages of treatment,” she says.

CANARIE – Advancing Innovation in Canada

CANARIE connects Canada to the world with programs that equip researchers, students, and start-ups in Canada to excel on the global stage. Established in 1993 by the Government of Canada as a non-profit corporation to advance Canada’s knowledge and innovation infrastructure, the organization’s priorities, as established by Innovation, Science and Development Canada, are to:

  • Provide an internationally competitive ultra-high-speed network for Canada’s research, innovation and advanced education communities;
  • Develop, demonstrate and implement next-generation technologies;
  • Bolster Canada’s technology capabilities by assisting Canadian institutions and companies operating in Canada to advance innovation and commercialization of products and services.

CANARIE members include colleges, universities, healthcare facilities, research and post-secondary institutes, non-profit innovation organizations, government agencies and private sector organizations from across Canada.

“The organization’s mandate has evolved over its 30-year history,” says Kathryn Anthonisen, CANARIE President and CEO.  Initiatives led by CANARIE since its inception include:

  • laying the groundwork, with provincial partner networks, for the first commercial Internet in Canada;
  • incubating the Internet Registration Authority in Canada, now known as CIRA;
  • working with global peers to align international research and education infrastructures to support globally collaborative research, now formalized via the Global Network Advancement Group (GNA-G);
  • developing the grid certificate authority in Canada that provides secure access to data generated from the Large Hadron Collider and other advanced digital technologies;
  • supporting the uptake of cloud technology by Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Canada;
  • identifying gaps in research software and championing the development of powerful research software tools to efficiently enable researchers across many disciplines to accelerate discovery, a program that has transitioned to the Digital Research Alliance of Canada as part of the Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI) Strategy; and
  • supporting Research Data Canada to align research data activities within Canada and internationally, now transitioned to the Digital Research Alliance of Canada as part of the DRI Strategy.

CANARIE’s current mandate includes enhancement of the cybersecurity capabilities of Canada’s research and education institutions. “The post-secondary education sector is one of the top three targets in Canada for cybersecurity breaches” notes Anthonisen.  “Threat actors from nation-states are sophisticated, well-funded, and well-organized. They target research data, intellectual property and infrastructure to disrupt and disable the peace of mind of Canadians,” she says

To address its cybersecurity mandate, CANARIE launched the Cybersecurity Initiatives Program (CIP) in November 2020. 97% of 220 research and post-secondary organizations that are eligible for the program are now participating in the CIP, which offers funded services to strengthen organizations’ cybersecurity capabilities.

As part of this work, CANARIE and its provincial and territorial partners in the National Research and Education Network (NREN) launched a national cybersecurity assessment service, based on the five key dimensions of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework. The goals of the assessment are to provide a clear, comprehensive picture of the cybersecurity maturity of Canada’s research & education sector, and identify risk-based priorities for the planning, investment, and delivery of future cybersecurity initiatives at the organizational, regional, and federal level.

CANARIE, with its partners in the NREN, is also piloting a federated Security Operations Centre for the research and education sector, CanSSOC. Given that many institutions and NREN partners have already invested in cybersecurity expertise, processes and infrastructures, “CANARIE’s goal is to stitch together these existing investments to cost-effectively enable advanced threat detection and response for universities, colleges, polytechnics and CEGEPs across Canada,” says Anthonisen.

To support innovation in the private sector, Canadian companies with fewer than 500 employees have access to CANARIE’s DAIR Cloud Program, which provides resources to assist start-ups and SMEs for rapid and scalable design, development, validation, and demonstration of products and services. Over 1900 start-ups have used the DAIR Cloud program to build and test new products and services. This service is part of CANARIE’s Private Sector Innovation mandate, which recognizes CANARIE’s unique position at the nexus of research, technology, and government policy, and serves to accelerate the adoption of transformative technologies among Canadian businesses.

“CANARIE is an essential service,” notes Sylvie LaPerrière, who serves as Past Chair on the organization’s Board of Directors.  “We are very much at the service of the community. We do a lot of listening to uncover future needs. And through this listening comes innovation.”

CANARIE is deeply committed to equity, diversity and inclusion, which is reflected in the diversity of its Board of Directors. The Board of Directors includes members from across Canada, representing research, education and industry from all regions. “A plurality of voices makes the board stronger,” says LaPerrière. “The CANARIE Board, with extensive expertise from both the public and private sectors, strengthens CANARIE’s ability to deliver on its mandate priorities by ensuring a diversity of perspectives that challenge management to maximize the value CANARIE delivers to its stakeholder communities.”

This commitment applies equally to CANARIE’s 84 employees. “When people feel they can bring their whole selves to work, they are able to bring richness and value to the organization,” says Anthonisen.

In late October, Profound Impact founder and CEO, Sherry Shannon-Vanstone, was appointed as the Vice Chair of the CANARIE board working with the newly appointed Chair, Larry Rosia, President of Saskatchewan Polytechnic, and Past Chair, Sylvie LaPerrière.

Sherry’s appointment as Vice Chair of the CANARIE board reflects the significant contributions she has made to a range of industries, including cryptography, information security, and telecommunications as well as her dedication to the advancement of women in technology. “I look forward to working with my fellow board members to strengthen Canada’s national digital infrastructure and ensure our country continues to inspire ground-breaking innovations and remain globally competitive,” she says.

Harald Stöver

Dr. Harald Stöver
Founder and CEO, Allarta Life Science
Professor, McMaster University

It was the influence and encouragement of a high school science teacher and the chemistry set handed down by his older brother that first triggered Dr. Harald Stöver’s interest in science. “I had a tiny lab in our house where I carried out chemical reactions and experimented with fireworks – including an unsuccessful attempt to blow up a tree stump. My parents were very supportive of my hobby, except perhaps for that tree stump. My mother even helped me conduct science experiments in the family kitchen,” recalls Harald.

Harald Stöver had completed three years of undergraduate chemistry study at the Technische Universitat Darmstadt in his native Germany when he decided to move to Canada for a year. His plan was to complete his degree at the University of Ottawa and return to Germany. However, his academic advisors in Ottawa noted that Harald’s undergraduate work from Darmstadt qualified him to enter graduate school. He became the first graduate student of the late Christian Detellier and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Ottawa. “Canada was now my home. They captured me!” says Harald.

During his time at the University of Ottawa, Harald established a connection with Professor Jean Fréchet, a professor in polymer chemistry. When Professor Fréchet moved to Cornell University as IBM Professor of Polymer Chemistry, he invited Harald to join him as a postdoctoral fellow to start research on a new technique. “We did great work together. I felt comfortable setting up new labs. After all, I had practiced in my mother’s kitchen,” says Harald.

Harald is currently a professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the Faculty of Science at McMaster University. During his tenure of more than three decades at McMaster, he has established a reputation as a leading researcher in polymer hydrogels, bio-relevant macromolecules and the delivery of biologics. His research and work with industry has been recognized by being named an NSERC/3M Industrial Research Chair, receiving Canada’s National Macromolecular Science and Engineering Award, and his appointment as Director of the NSERC Collaborative Research and Training Experience (CREATE) Program in Biomaterials.

When McMaster University decided to expand its focus on teaching and research to include entrepreneurship, Harald’s experience and affinity for working with industry made him a clear choice for the university to invest in transferring his research to market.  Allarta Life Science, a pre-clinical life science company that develops next-generation biomaterials for immune-privileged delivery of cells, stem cells and biologics, was launched in 2019 by Harald Stöver and Maria Antonakos, a senior executive with a broad range of experience managing innovation, and with an equity investment by McMaster.

Allarta Life Science’s work is poised to fundamentally change the way that patients with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D), a chronic disease that comes with a host of potential complications, including increased risk of stroke and heart attack, receive treatment.

Patients with advanced T1D are eligible for islet cell transplants from the pancreas of a deceased donor.  However, this alternative to multiple daily injections of insulin to manage blood sugar comes with costs to patients’ health. Because the body identifies the transplanted cells as invaders, patients must take immune suppression drugs for the rest of their lives. The solution being developed by Allarta Life Science is an immune-protective polymer gel, not recognized by the body as foreign material, to encapsulate the islet cells while still allowing the cells to receive nutrients and release insulin by diffusion. Harald likens the gel to a diver’s shark cage that protects a human from attack while allowing water to pass through. Ultimately, this therapy will reduce or eliminate the need for current immune suppression drugs that leave patients at risk for infections.

As a vertically integrated company, Allarta Life Sciences also works with partners who develop stem cell-based therapeutic cells that would eliminate the need for donor transplants. Fewer than a dozen other companies work in this area. Some develop new cells not recognized by the immune system, others focus on the immune-protective barrier. Allarta is unique in that their work covers all bases by producing hydrogels that contain islet cells, allow diffusion of insulin and deflect the immune system. “We expect to work with human subjects in clinical trials within two years,” notes Harald. 

In October 2023, Allarta announced news of an award from JDRF, the leading global T1D research and advocacy organization, to fund the company’s ongoing work. “The JDRF award will help us advance these therapies further towards the clinic,” Harald says.

Harald is excited to be part of McMaster University’s evolution of academic focus to include building the entrepreneurial sector. “This brings fundamental science developed in university labs to clinical settings.  It’s good for undergraduate and graduate students and for faculty and gives back to the community,” he explained.

Harald Stöver has come a long way from the experiments he conducted in his home science lab and his mother’s kitchen. His ground-breaking research at McMaster University and the work of Allarta Life Sciences are poised to make a profound impact by improving the lives of Type 1 Diabetes patients worldwide.

You can learn more about Harald in the visualizations below.

Do you have an Impact Story to share? Reach out to us at connections@profoundimpact.com for a chance to have your story featured in an upcoming newsletter!

CEO Message

September was a month of celebration and new partnerships at Profound Impact.

We were proud to name Hui Huang Hoe and Mike Farwell as winners of the 2023 Impactful Actions Awards on September 14, Profound Impact Day. 

Profound Impact Day is a time to recognize the world’s diverse leaders and changemakers who are leaving their mark on the global community through their initiatives, influence, and impact. This year the award expanded to include two categories: Young Leader and Lifetime Achievement. Hoe was awarded the Young Leader category, and Farwell accepted the Lifetime Achievement award. 

Hui Huang Hoe is a serial inventor of green electrochemistry and the founder of elerGreen, a cleantech startup recovering valuable polymers, metals and chemicals from chemical waste. 

Mike Farwell is a radio host at CityNews 570 in Kitchener and is play-by-play announcer for the Kitchener Rangers OHL hockey team. He is a relentless community builder who turned the grief from losing his two sisters to cystic fibrosis into Farwell4Hire, the largest annual fundraiser for Cystic Fibrosis Canada, through which he has raised more than $1.25 million. 

You’ll learn more about Hui Huang and Mike in the profiles in this month’s newsletter.

We were also pleased to announce a new partnership with Haltech Regional Innovation Centre in September.  Haltech is a non-profit organization launched in 2011 and is the go-to strategic connector and educator for start-ups in the Halton Region of Ontario and beyond. The partnership between Profound Impact and Haltech is designed to discover a range of funding and research opportunities for internal research and product development for Haltech’s clients through access to Research Impact, our AI-powered tool.

Profound Impact is proud to be a woman-founded and led company. Last month, I joined Sean Weisbrot, host of the We Live to Build podcast, to talk about my previous career in cryptography, my ongoing passion for encouraging women in business and the power of female investors.  You’ll find the podcast here.

Thank you for connecting with us and the Profound Impact community.

Sherry Shannon-Vanstone

Mike Farwell

Mike Farwell
Farwell4Hire

2023 Impactful Actions Award Winner – Lifetime Achievement

“Community is my energy. It’s my fuel. It invigorates and inspires me,” says Mike Farwell, a relentless community builder who turned the grief of losing two sisters to cystic fibrosis (CF) into the largest annual fundraiser for Cystic Fibrosis Canada. The 2023 Impactful Action Award Lifetime Achievement Award winner’s Farwell4Hire campaign has raised over $1.25 million in unrestricted funds over the last decade, supporting research, advocacy, and clinical care for people around the world living with CF, the most common fatal genetic disease in Canada.

Mike was born in Kitchener, Ontario as the middle of five children. He aspired to be a radio announcer, but not believing that this was a real job, he attended the University of Waterloo, earned a degree in Arts and went on to teach high school. “After one year as a teacher, I decided that this wasn’t the job for me,” says Mike. He enrolled in Conestoga College’s television and radio broadcast program and graduated with two career ambitions:  to work as a radio music DJ and as a hockey announcer. He began his radio career in Salmon Arm, British Columbia, where he was a music DJ and also had the chance to report on the local hockey team. Mike moved from Salmon Arm to work in communities across Canada for several years before returning to the Waterloo Region.

Mike’s second dream job, as a hockey reporter and announcer, came about as the result of responding to an open casting call by Rogers for a daytime talk show host position in Kitchener. The casting director noticed that Mike had listed experience in sports reporting on his resume. “We need a sports guy,” she told him. Within a week, he was on camera for the first time as a field reporter for university sports including football, basketball, and volleyball. Mike now has more than 20 years of radio and television broadcasting experience, works with Rogers Radio in Kitchener as the host of the Mike Farwell Show, and is the play-by-play voice of the Kitchener Rangers on CityNews 570.

Mike created Farwell4Hire to honour Luanne and Sheri Farwell, the two sisters he and his family lost to CF. Luanne died in the fall of 1993 at the age of 24 and, just nine months later, Sheri succumbed to cystic fibrosis at the age of 18. “Farwell4Hire was started by accident,” says Mike.  “I’m really bad at asking for things. I’d rather do.” Prior to launching the campaign, Mike had raised money through stunts, including jumping out of an airplane, sitting in (and getting wet) in a dunk tank and participating in a boxing match. The odd jobs Mike has performed as part of Farwell4Hire have ranged from the routine, like washing windows and mowing lawns, to the more exotic, like cleaning a horse’s sheath. 

Farwell4Hire is an excellent example of community collaboration. Small business owners, associations and larger companies across Waterloo Region come together each May in support of Mike’s efforts. The campaign is a fundraiser with absolutely no overhead. Managed entirely through the efforts of volunteers, every dollar donated to Farwell4Hire is a dollar donated directly to CF.

When asked how he finds the time to write, produce, execute and edit his daily radio show, travel with the Kitchener Rangers to do play-by-playing reporting on their games, and run an annual month-long fundraising campaign, Mike again points to the importance of community to his life. He quotes fellow Waterloo Region broadcaster and public speaker, Neil Aitchison: “Community service is the rent you pay for the space you occupy.” Mike continues, “I don’t think I could possibly give back to the community what it has given to me.”

Mike is delighted with the ongoing progress in CF research and with how the $1.25 million raised for research through Farwell4Hire has contributed to massive impacts in extending the lives of Canadians living with CF. When Mike started fundraising as a teenager, the estimated lifespan of a child with CF was less than 12 years. In 2023, a baby born with CF today has a median life expectancy of 57 years. And Trikafta, a new drug with the potential to treat up to 90% of Canadians with CF, doesn’t just treat symptoms. This transformational treatment targets the basic defect from specific genetic mutations that cause the disease.

Mike was struck by a statement made by Roberto Clemente, the late National Baseball Hall of Famer who has an award for sportsmanship and community involvement named for him in recognition of his charity work in Latin American and Caribbean countries during the off-seasons. “Roberto said that a person who can help others and fails to do so has wasted his life. I don’t want to waste my life. I want to help if I can. And the work I do is the way I can do my part,” Mike adds.

Profound Impact is proud to present the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Impactful Action Award to Mike Farwell, a remarkable leader who has worked tirelessly to build community and to raise funds for Cystic Fibrosis research, impacting lives in the Waterloo Region and around the world.

Do you have an Impact Story to share? Reach out to us at connections@profoundimpact.com for a chance to have your story featured in an upcoming newsletter!

Hui Huang Hoe

Hui Huang Hoe
Founder and Inventor, elerGreen Industry
Photo Credit: Thomas Truong

2023 Impactful Actions Award Winner – Young Leader

As record temperatures were set in the northern hemisphere during the summer of 2023, people in locations as diverse as Canada, Europe and Hawaii experienced the severe effects of climate change in the form of ocean storms, wildfires, floods and droughts. For Hui Huang Hoe, this was not a new phenomenon. He had experienced the effects of climate change while growing up in Malaysia as ever-rising temperatures and extreme weather fluctuations resulted in floods and droughts. Hui Huang moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto, and, in part, to escape the heat of Southeast Asia. 

Hui Huang was inspired at an early age to study science after reading Stephen Hawking’s book, The Universe in a Nutshell. He went on to exhibit a keen interest and talent in science and math during high school, where he won the national Physics and Chemistry Olympiads Championships. Motivated by this success, he decided to pursue a career in chemical engineering, with a focus on sustainable energy and environmental engineering. He was awarded a scholarship to study in Canada and enrolled in the Chemical Engineering program at the University of Toronto, where he earned an undergraduate degree with High Honours as the top student in his class, venerated by the Society of Chemical Industry Merit Award.

Hui Huang considers himself lucky to have received exposure to research in the summer following his first year of study, through his award-winning work on energy-efficient fuel with Professor Ya-Huei (Cathy) Chin, now a Canada Research Chair. In his third year, he was granted a senior fellowship to work with Professor Donald W. Kirk, another of his mentors, on carbon-free zinc-air fuel cell research. Hui Huang produced an award-winning thesis (such as Mackay Hewer Memorial Prize, as the best chemical engineering thesis related to environmental studies) on converting carbon dioxide into fuels powered by renewable electricity. As part of his graduate research work, the carbon dioxide conversion was expanded beyond fuels into useful products. The University of Toronto recognized Hui Huang’s work with numerous awards and filed a patent, Electrochemical Carbon Dioxide Utilization, related to his research.

Hui Huang went on to establish elerGreen, a cleantech start-up company that addresses waste remediation through the recovery of polymers, metals and chemicals from waste and renewable electricity in an economical and eco-friendly way. For elerGreen’s key differentiator, he invented and patented a unique electrochemical reactor of moving electrodes against stationary blades to continuously harvest solid products. Interestingly, he conceived elerGreen moving electrode reactor with an Eureka moment while exercising on a treadmill!

elerGreen moving electrode reactor facilitates the conversion of pollutants, including tailings and petrochemical waste, into valuable metals, polymers and feedstocks, powered by renewable electricity. As a result, elerGreen converts CO2 or its derivatives into useful products, while replacing fossil fuel combustion in chemical or manufacturing plants, which is more energy-efficient. In layman’s terms, elerGreen cleantech is like Tesla’s electric vehicle, but for chemical or manufacturing plants. 

Hui Huang’s leadership extends far beyond his work in cleantech. In addition to being a serial inventor in green electrochemistry, Hui Huang has been recognized for teaching excellence and for his work coaching students. He also wrote and published Mathematica Particularis, a book on engineering mathematics that is offered free of charge to students. 

Hui Huang believes strongly in giving back to the community. In 2022, elerGreen partnered with Venture for Canada (VFC) to collaborate on the VFC Intrapreneurship Program, an experience offered to foster Canadian youth entrepreneurship and innovation. As part of this program, he coaches students, teaching them about clean technologies, educating them on intellectual property protection and making them aware of the importance of corporate social responsibility. 

elerGreen also actively participates in climate change planning, management and governance, as a policy recommendation signatory for Canada’s federal budget on cleantech and climate action. Beyond cleantech, elerGreen employs business model innovation as collaborative sales, to empower the community with cost-sharing and joint-IP protection. 

elerGreen’s community impact was recognized in 2022 as it was named one of the four semi-finalists by the Innovators and Entrepreneurs Foundation (IEF) for the Canada Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CANIE) Awards, in the category of Climate-Related Product Innovator of the Year. 

elerGreen’s impact also goes globally beyond Canada, recognized by Hub de Innovación Minera del Perú (Mining Innovation Hub of Peru) as PERUMIN Finalist in the category of Environment and Sustainability category, for meeting various UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on converting heavy metals tailings into saleable solid metals as a Canadian corporation. 

In June of 2023, elerGreen was named as one of 21 companies by Innovation Guelph to receive cleantech grants totaling $630,000 through the Government of Canada-supported i.d.e.a. Fund, an initiative to help clean growth firms in southern Ontario to develop or redesign green products, services, process and technologies and to create made-in-Canada climate change solutions. elerGreen is using these funds to collaborate with students at St. Lawrence College to establish a full-scale reactor, now further being upgraded into a pilot plant. 

Hui Huang works to integrate elerGreen’s core principles of profitability and sustainability while contributing to society by developing cleantech technology and expertise and shifting the mindset of how society supports the cleantech sector. To support these goals, elerGreen has become a certified Ontario Made company and a member of Ontario Clean Technology Industry Association. “What we do at elerGreen can be summed up as Electrification Done Green,” Hui Huang says. 

Hui Huang Hoe’s passion and success as a researcher, inventor and founder, his ongoing work to develop the next generation of cleantech entrepreneurs through his coaching and teaching and elerGreen’s commitment to equity, accessibility and inclusion for underrepresented people and newcomers to Canada truly make him a young leader deserving of the 2023 Impactful Action Award. 

Finally, the Impactful Action Award comes with a donation by Profound Impact to a charity, and Hui Huang Hoe and elerGreen have nominated Parkdale Centre for Innovation. This donation to Parkdale Centre for Innovation would further support public awareness and social entrepreneurship on equity, accessibility, and inclusion for underrepresented people, including women, Black, Indigenous, people of color, and newcomers to Canada. 

Do you have an Impact Story to share? Reach out to us at connections@profoundimpact.com for a chance to have your story featured in an upcoming newsletter!

CEO Message

The Profound Impact team is looking forward to announcing the 2023 Impactful Action Award winners on September 14th during Profound Impact Day. This annual virtual event honours the late Professor Scott A. Vanstone and celebrates the impact and legacy of collaboration and innovation developed through the Profound Impact community.  


Profound Impact Day 2023 will commence at 12 noon EDT on Sept. 14th and feature a fireside chat with past Impactful Actions Awards winners Dr. Feridun Hamdullahpur, former president of the University of Waterloo, and Kehkashan Basu M.S.M., Founder of Green Hope Foundation. 

Learn more about the finalists in both the Young Leaders and Lifetime Achievement categories in this month’s newsletter and register for Profound Impact Day 2023 here.

The Profound Impact team had a productive time at the NCURA (National Council of University Research Administrators) annual meeting in Washington, DC last month. There was tremendous interest in Research Impact and everyone loved the Canadian maple syrup candy! We also conducted a survey of attendees about their areas of concern regarding research funding and industry partnership. We will analyze the responses and make the report available on our website soon.

As Profound Impact continues its growth in the Canadian market and expands into the United States and internationally, we are pleased to announce that the company surpassed our goal of raising $3 million in two tranches this summer, for a total of $3,125,000.  A group of female investors, including many who were first-time investors, led the way for Profound Impact’s pre-seed round of financing, which closed on May 5, 2023 and August 4, 2023 respectively. The participation of first-time female investors sends a clear message of confidence in Profound Impact’s vision and the team’s leadership. 

We’re excited about how we continue to connect great people to do great things and look forward to seeing you at our noon event – Profound Impact Day on September 14.

Thank you for connecting with us and the Profound Impact community!

Sherry Shannon-Vanstone

Meet the Impactful Actions Awards Finalists

Young Leaders Finalists

Leigh Zachary Bursey

Leigh Zachary Bursey is an activist, journalist, former three-term municipal politician, singer-songwriter, recording artist, writer and champion for the homeless. He has a long history of tackling challenging social topics including homelessness, mental health, harm reduction and allied support for the LGBTQIA community.  While serving as a city councillor for Brockville, Ontario, he came out as a suicide attempt survivor and an advocate for the federally tabled National Suicide Prevention Strategy private member’s bill.

Leigh has worked in youth homelessness shelters and adult warming centres, advocating for naloxone training and increased harm reduction supports and has been a strong advocate for increased public transit hours and operating funds for local libraries.  He focuses his speaking, research and journalism on amplifying marginalized people and sharing their ideas for change and resolutions to community challenges. Through his work, he has amplified these voices by helping them deliver meaningful messages and by challenging stigmas.

Hui Huang Hoe

Hui Huang Hoe is a serial inventor in green electrochemistry.  He founded elerGreen, a cleantech start-up that recovers valuable polymers, metals and chemicals from chemical waste. elerGreen places an emphasis on giving back to the society through mentorship of student entrepreneurs in Venture for Canada (VFC) Intrapreneurship projects. elerGreen exposes students to diversity, equity, inclusion and corporate social responsibility through these projects and by hiring visible minorities, people with disabilities, youth, newcomers to Canada and survivors of violence and the criminal justice system.

Hui Huang encourages youth entrepreneurship by coaching students in Venture for Canada. He has also published a free book, Mathematica Particularis, written to complement the syllabus of engineering mathematics, particularly for B.A.Sc. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Toronto.

Tabatha Laverty

Tabatha Laverty is an acclaimed non-profit leader and award-winning marketer with a passion for workplace equity and inclusion. As VP of Marketing and External Relations at the Accelerator Centre, she has been instrumental in leading the organization in rebranding and cementing the centre’s status as a global innovation ecosystem leader.

Through Tabatha’s leadership, the Accelerator Centre has made significant progress in its mission to create a more inclusive and equitable innovation ecosystem. After only one year of work under the action plan, the centre has nearly achieved its objective of gender parity and 30% representation from traditionally underrepresented groups across its stakeholder groups. This includes the Accelerator Centre’s board, mentorship team, staff, and the founders. In addition, the centre’s most recent program launch boasts over 63% of its participants being women-led businesses, 26% being led by newcomers to Canada and 5% by indigenous entrepreneurs.

Tabatha was instrumental in developing the Accelerator Centre’s cleantech incubation program, a first for Waterloo Region. In 2020, the programming was expanded to support all entrepreneurs working on solutions that support the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, adding resources for med-tech, ed-tech, smart city and social innovation-focused start-ups, supporting nearly 100 start-ups.

You can see more from the Young Leaders and their impact below:

Lifetime Achievement Finalists

Mike Farwell

Mike Farwell is a relentless community builder who turned his grief of losing two sisters to cystic fibrosis (CF) into the largest annual fundraiser for Cystic Fibrosis Canada, raising over $1.25m of unrestricted funds supporting research, advocacy, and clinical care for Canadians living with CF.

Between his day job at CityNews 570, his night job calling games for the Kitchener Rangers junior hockey team and his philanthropic work with organizations across Waterloo Region, Mike Farwell’s name and voice are synonymous with leadership in the Waterloo Region. In 2014, he began the Farwell4Hire fundraising campaign, which has raised more than $1.25m for research to find a cure for cystic fibrosis. After many years of soliciting donations, Mike thought it was time for a different approach and offered to do work in exchange for donations. From weeding gardens to washing windows, Farwell4Hire has raised $1.25m since its launch, allowing CF Canada to bring a new transformational drug (Trikafta) to be widely adopted across Canada in 2022. Trikafta is considered the single greatest innovation in the history of cystic fibrosis, treating 90% of Canadians with CF by addressing the causes instead of managing the symptoms and potentially preventing irreversible damage caused by this progressive disease. It is now publicly available and insurable to all CF patients in Canada six years of age and older, with advocacy in place for younger patients.

For his tireless efforts on this annual fundraising campaign, and his genuine support of building community through his talk radio show, Mike is a true example of one person making a huge impact on the lives of many.

Lynn Smith

As a proud member of Peavine Métis Settlement, Lynn Smith is leading her northern community through a significant change to take control of monitoring the impact of climate change on their land and waterways. Through compassion, perseverance, engagement, and collaboration, she is guiding her community on the path to being able to once again drink the water from their rivers and streams; an act not experienced since her own childhood because of pollution. She is doing this by enabling her community to achieve data sovereignty, and building knowledge in her community so that they can better hold Industry and all levels of Government accountable for their actions that impact Indigenous lands.

Lynn’s exemplary leadership has created a program of environmental monitoring that delivers real benefits to her community. Her mentorship model has built a team of community-based Environmental Monitors and Data Technicians whose skills and talent are retained in the community for the benefit of the community. At the same time, Lynn practices inclusion in how she shares her knowledge and learnings with other Indigenous communities suffering from similar environmental challenges. She is doing this by showing the way for communities to build competencies in their consultation teams to autonomously monitor their land, generate and interpret data, and enact management programs. Lynn is also a builder of inclusivity, partnering with scientists outside of her community, teaching indigenous ways of knowing, and sharing Western-based methods of doing science with professionals who have participated in creating environmental monitoring programs in her community and beyond.

Lynn has been recognized for her achievements by being asked to represent her community on the Board of Directors of the Lesser Slave Lake Watershed Council, which works to improve and maintain a healthy watershed through education, planning and implementation of shared initiatives in support of communities and ecosystems throughout the region.

Stephanie Thompson

Stephanie Thompson is a passionate engineer and community leader who actively pursues new and innovative ways of promoting science, technology and learning in the Niagara Region.  “Be a ladder, be a lamp or be a lifeboat” is Stephanie’s motto, which she uses to inspire the women in Niagara and online.

In 2018, Stephanie launched her social enterprise, STEM by Steph, developed on the notion that the lack of female role models prevents girls from considering careers in the trades and in STEM fields. Following the principle that STEM is best tackled by connecting women with knowledge with those who need support in breaking barriers, the organization offers STEMbySteph, a frequently sold-out social event in the Niagara Region where Stephanie and other women teach mothers and their daughters about STEM subjects in a laughter-filled atmosphere focused on camaraderie.

Stephanie holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Chemical Engineering, a Certificate of Professional Management from Brock University, and is a Professional Engineer in Ontario. 

You can see more from the Lifetime Achievement finalists here:

Do you have an impact story to share? Let us know at connections@profoundimpact.com for a chance to be featured in an upcoming newsletter!

CEO Message

The Profound Impact team is proud to announce the finalists for this year’s Impactful Actions Awards.  We were inspired by this year’s nominees and are excited to recognize two recipients for the first time this year (listed below in alphabetical order).

The finalists in the Young Leaders category are:

  • Leigh Zachary Bursey
  • Hui Huang Hoe
  • Tabatha Laverty

The three Lifetime Achievement finalists are:

  • Mike Farwell
  • Lynn Smith
  • Stephanie Thompson

Thank you to everyone who submitted nominations. The winner from each category will be announced on Profound Impact Day on September 14. 

Canada is renowned for having brought important innovations to the world, including Banting and Best’s discovery of insulin at the University of Toronto, the development of the IMAX camera projector, and the Canadarm robotic arm used in space shuttle orbiters. Less known is Canada’s fundamental role in the development and evolution of computer animation and visual effects.  This month’s Impact Story introduces you to Marceli Wein, who came to Canada in 1952 after surviving Nazi Germany as a hidden child, became an “accidental graduate student” at McGill University, and, with his colleague Nestor Burtnyk and director Peter Foldes, created the first fully computer-animated film in 1974.

Canada’s computer science departments and software companies are responsible for much of the technology behind the computer animation and special effects seen on today’s screens.  You’ll read about those contributions, including the pioneering researchers and software developers whose work is used in major studios around the world, in this issue’s Research Spotlight.  And in the Researcher Spotlight you’ll meet Mark Jones, the educator, producer, and writer who has spent more than two decades working to train many of those award-winning artists.

This issue also features results from the survey of polytechnics, colleges, and universities across Canada conducted by Profound Impact to gather feedback on information sharing between partners, understanding grant funding and partnership opportunities, and helping build grant partnerships.

Thank you for connecting with us and the Profound Impact community!

Sherry Shannon-Vanstone

Research Spotlight: Canada’s Computer Animation Innovations

Toy Story. Up. Monsters Inc. Shrek. Finding Nemo. WALL-E. Ice Age. The Incredibles.  Ratatouille. Cars. Frozen. Inside Out.  These fully computer-animated feature films have been nominated for and won Academy Awards and have transformed animation from a medium previously reserved for Saturday morning cartoons to one used by filmmakers to tell stories for people of all ages. Canadian researchers and software companies have played a significant role in developing the tools used by animators to tell those stories. Many of those animators are graduates of renowned computer animation programs from colleges and universities across Canada.

Canadian Firsts

As noted in this month’s Impact Story, the first fully computer-animated film was not produced by a Hollywood studio, but by the National Film Board of Canada. Hunger/La Faim was directed by Hungarian-born Peter Foldes using technology invented by two Canadians: Nestor Burtnyk, an electrical engineer and Dr. Marceli Wein, a physicist.  After its release in 1974, Hunger/La Faim was nominated for an Academy Award, in the Animated Shorts category and received many other international film awards including the Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival.  In 1997, Wein and Burtnyk received Technical Academy Awards in recognition of the impact of their work on computer animation in the film industry.

In 1984, The Adventures of André & Wally B., a computer-animated short produced by the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Project, the predecessor of Pixar, was released at the annual SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference and sparked the film industry’s interest in computer-generated films. The technical lead for the film was Bill Reeves, a founding member of Pixar and a graduate of the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo and the Dynamic Graphics Project at the University of Toronto.  

Groundbreaking research and technology

The Computer Graphics Lab at the University of Waterloo and the Dynamic Graphics Project at the University of Toronto are two of the most influential computer graphics research laboratories in Canada.  

Kellogg S. (Kelly) Booth joined the Computer Science Department at the University of Waterloo in 1977 and John Beatty in 1978, and in 1979, they began a research group in Computer Graphics and Interaction. Together with Richard Bartels who joined the department in 1981, they formed the Computer Graphics Laboratory (CGL), one of the first in Canada. Marceli Wein was an adjunct professor of computer science in the lab.

Graduates of CGL, including Rob Krieger and Paul Breslin, would go on to win Academy Awards. 

The Dynamic Graphic Project (DGP) at the University of Toronto was founded in 1967 by Leslie Mezei. In 1972, He was joined by Ron Baecker, who coined the name Dynamic Graphics Project in 1974. DGP’s alumni are now on faculty at top universities around the world and at major industrial research labs, and, like Bill Reeves, have won Academy Awards for their ground-breaking work.

Tony de Peltrie, the first computer graphics animated character with synchronized speech, was first shown at the SIGGRAPH conference in 1985.  The short film, which was produced by four young programmers at the University of Montreal, shows the first animated human character to express emotion through facial expressions and body movements and received more than 20 international awards.  John Lasseter said about the film, “Years from now Tony de Peltrie will be looked upon as the landmark piece, where real, fleshy characters were first animated by computer.” 

Daniel Langlois, one of the creators of Tony de Peltrie, was an artist and programmer trained as a designer and computer animator for film. After the completion of the film, Langlois founded the company Softimage in Montreal. Softimage’s 3D animation package became an industry-standard in the 1990s, used by major visual effects studios and in films including The Matrix and Jurassic Park.  Softimage was also used extensively in the computer gaming industry and the company, along with Tony de Peltrie, is credited as one of the reasons Montreal has become one of the global centers of the computer gaming industry.

Recognition of the quality of computer animation by the film industry first came in 1988, when Pixar’s Tin Toy, became the first computer-animated film to receive an Academy Award.  And history was made again in 1991 when computer-generated image (CGI) backgrounds were fully integrated with hand-drawn animated characters using software from Toronto’s Alias Research in the ballroom scene in Beauty and the Beast.

Alias Research was founded by Stephen Bingham, Nigel McGrath, Susan McKenna and David Springer in 1983 with initial funding from scientific research tax credits, the founders’ personal funds, and a $61,000 grant from Canada’s National Research Council.  Alias 1, the company’s first software package, was released in 1985 and in 1989, Alias 2 was used to produce The Abyss, which won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. In 1990, Alias’ PowerAnimator software was used to produce Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 1991. Alias’ industry standard product, the 3D modeling and animation package, Maya, was delivered in 1998 and is recognized as the world’s premier 3D animation software, used on every film winning the Best Visual Effects Academy Award since 1997.

Toronto is also home to Side Effects Software (SideFX), founded by Kim Davidson and Greg Hermanovic.  Davidson and Hermanovic joined Omnibus, a pioneering company in the then-emerging world of computer graphics, in 1985 and immersed themselves in production by writing their own software and creating visual effects. 

They founded SideFX in 1987 and released the PRISMS software package, which was succeeded by Houdini 3D animation software.  Houdini is used by major visual effects companies and film studios for the creation of visual effects for films including Fantasia 2000, Frozen, Zootopia and Rio.  

SideFX technology and developers, including Kim Davison, Greg Hermanovic, Paul Breslin and Mark Elendt, have been recognized by the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences five times for Houdini and its technology, in 1998, 2003, 2012, and in 2019, where SideFX received the Award of Merit. In 2019, SideFX was awarded a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award.

Developing the next generation of animators

In addition to producing award-winning films and industry-standard 3D animation software, Canadian colleges are renowned for their work in graduating some of the best practitioners in the visual effects and computer animation business.

Sheridan College in Ontario houses the Faculty of Animation, Arts & Design (FAAD), Canada’s largest art school. Sheridan animation alumni have a long history of success at the Academy Awards, including Domee Shi, the first female director of the Pixar short, Bao, which received the award for Best Animated Short in 2019.

The Ian Gillespie Faculty of Design + Dynamic Media at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECU) in British Columbia offers the Bachelor of Media Arts (BMA) Program with two animation streams: 2D + Experimental Animation and 3D Computer Animation. Graduates of these Animation BMA Programs have been recruited by major studios and organizations including DreamWorks Animation, Pixar, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), Universal, and the National Film Board of Canada.

The Faculty of Art at Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD U) in Toronto features an Experimental Animation Program that combines Contemporary Art with Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR), 2D and 3D, Digital Compositing, and Stop Motion. 

Université Laval in Quebec is home to the Faculty of Planning, Architecture, Art and Design (FAAAD), which houses the School of Design, where two courses of animation study include the Bachelor of Animated Arts and Science (BASA) and the Certificate in the Art and Science of Animation (CASA). 

The School of the Arts, Media, Performance, and Design (AMPD) and Lassonde School of Engineering at York University in Toronto offer a Digital Media Arts (DMA) Program. Digital Media Arts is Ontario’s only degree program that integrates Art, Engineering, and Computer Science. 

The School of Creative Arts & Animation at Seneca Polytechnic has several paths to study animation including the Animation Diploma and Graduate Certificates in 3D Animation and Game Art & Animation. 

Moviegoers and animation lovers everywhere benefit from the ground-breaking accomplishments of award-winning Canadian computer scientists, artists, educators, and animators. Canada has made major contributions to the field of computer animation. From the production of the revolutionary Hunger/La Faim, to innovative research conducted in computer graphics labs in universities across the country, and software used by visual effects and film studios around the world, Canada is truly a major player in the world of computer animation.

Researcher Spotlight: Mark Jones

Mark Jones
Digital Technology Educator, Writer and Producer Photo Credit: David Goldman

As a teenager in suburban Toronto in the 1980s, Mark Jones spent his evenings participating in rehearsals for school plays and musicals or avoiding homework by programming video games on his Atari 800 computer. Today, Mark is an award-winning 25-year veteran of the creative communications and digital technologies industries who has worked as a college teacher and administrator, producer, artist, and writer. And those high school interests have endured as themes in both his education and career paths.

Mark enrolled in the Theatre Program at York University, but left after two years when he understood that his future didn’t include a career as an actor. He joined Addison-Wesley, a publisher of textbooks and computer literature, where he received training in sales, customer service, marketing, and publicity. Mark also learned how to publish, which led to the launch of CyberStage Communications, a consumer arts magazine that he founded in 1994. CyberStage evolved from a printed publication, that Mark’s parents helped to place in bookstores across Toronto, to an internationally-available digital publication that featured original material that focussed on the intersection between art and technology.

In 2000, Mark shifted his focus to digital arts education in his role as Executive Director of OnTarget, an Ontario-wide initiative that provided career development and education support programs for the digital technologies industries. He also continued his studies by completing his undergraduate degree at York University and earning an M.A. in Communication and Culture from Toronto Metropolitan and York Universities.

Through OnTarget’s partnerships with colleges, Mark started to teach courses on Interactive Media Business and Interface Design on a part-time basis at Seneca College in 2001. Mark’s background and experience in education, media, animation, and digital content and his focus on the connection between art and technology led to positions as Coordinator of the school’s Animation Centre, Associate Chair, and now Chair of the School of Creative Arts and Animation, overseeing programs in animation, new media, graphic design, photography, acting and music.

Seneca’s program features a cross-disciplinary model that recognizes the changing conditions in the industry, with a focus on developing student ability in animation art for any specialization rather than for a specific type of production. Under Mark’s direction, Seneca has worked with industry to understand the need for graduates to have traditional art skills as their foundation. The School of Creative Arts and Animation at Seneca operates as art school that teaches animation using technology as appropriate rather than a school that teaches animation software.  In addition to his role as Chair of the School of Creative Arts and Animation, Mark was also integral in founding and is Director of the Seneca Film Institute (SFI), which operates within Seneca’s Faculty of Communication, Art & Design. SFI will work with students across more than 30 programs, providing them with the skills and experiences that will allow them to thrive in Canada’s film industry. 

From his participation in theatre and computer gaming as a high school student, to his studies in and writing about culture and communication, his work at OnTarget, and his successful career at Seneca as a teacher, producer, and administrator, Mark has been immersed in the digital media industry for decades.  He is a founding board member of The Toronto Animation Arts Festival International (TAAFI) and was an executive producer of the animated short Subconscious Password, which won several awards including the Grand Prix at Annecy in 2013 and the Canadian Screen Award in 2014 for Best Animated Short. His work has been recognized by industry awards including the ITAC Hero of the Year Award and the Canadian New Media Award as Industry Advocate of the Year.  

Mark is most proud of Seneca’s happy, successful students who talk about their experience at Seneca as delivering high-quality education, and, as importantly, a supportive community.  Through his work at Seneca, he has played an extraordinary role in training animation and special effects professionals working around the world, including alumni who have worked on films including Coco, The Shape of Water, Toy Story 4, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – all of which have won Academy Awards for animation or special effects.

Mark will continue his work in education in his new position as Dean of the Faculty of Animation, Arts & Design (FAAD), effective Aug. 28. Sheridan College, Canada’s largest art school, is internationally recognized for outstanding programs that train performers, animators, filmmakers, designers, and artists and Mark looks forward to working with the students, faculty, and staff in this role.

Mark’s career path and his experience working with students lead him to provide advice regarding careers in the digital arts. “If you’re a parent, and your son or daughter is expressing an interest in a career related to media, design, or art, support it and discover it with them. The most persistent job myth in Canada today is that a career in these industries is not a route to prosperity.”