March was a busy month for showcasing Profound Impact, our focus on AI, and how our Research Impact platform uses AI and machine learning to disrupt the research funding industry.
I am pleased to have joined the Advisory Board of AI Partnerships Corporation, whose mission is to make AI more accessible and affordable to businesses of all sizes in order to further the mass adoption of enterprise AI. I look forward to working as a member of the Advisory Board to leverage the technology and expertise of the organization’s Affiliate Network of more than 120 AI solutions providers.
On March 21, I joined the Ivey Alumni Network at the sold-out AI Open House themed Insights from the Leading Edge of AI Adoption in Canada. This successful event, hosted by Deloitte and curated by and for Ivey Alumni, provided insight into the world of AI while helping demystify it. It was an honour to participate as a panelist, alongside others shaping Canada’s AI landscape, to share my insights on how we need to adopt a spirit of inclusion and lifelong learning related to how people affect AI.
To hear my thoughts on the need for companies to consider AI’s potential in automating their processes and the significance of staying informed about AI developments, check out Business Challenges Female Entrepreneurs Face In The Modern Economy, the newest episode of The Business of Intuition podcast I recorded with host Dean Newlund last month. You’ll also learn about Profound Impact’s mission of using AI technology to connect great people to do great things by matching researchers and corporations with relevant grants and funding options.
Looking forward to April, a report on why I joined forces with Deborah Rosati, Profound Impact board chair and founder and CEO of Women Get On Board, and Lara Zink, VP of Client Service and Development at Delaney Capital Management to create Women Funding Women (WFW) is featured in the April issue of the I Am Unbreakable magazine. Click on the link to learn about my entrepreneurial journey and how the WFW network is working to address the persistent funding gap faced by women entrepreneurs in North America.
In this month’s Impact Story, you’ll meet Jennifer Lee, Vice-Chair at Deloitte Canada. A bold, inspiring leader, Jennifer creates global transformation for her clients at Deloitte through her extensive expertise in a wide range of areas. You’ll also learn about her incredible passion for driving local and global impact through her international volunteerism and board work.
You’ll also meet Tomasz Bednarz, Director of Strategic Researcher Engagement at NVIDIA, and the subject of this month’s Researcher Spotlight. Tomasz’s rich background as a researcher, lab director and active volunteer in the computer graphics community provides him with the technical and managerial skills to lead a team that is discovering the new research superstars and helping those researchers to take their innovations to the next level by using NVIDIA-developed technology, tools and hardware.
Profound Impact’s mission is to revolutionize the way researchers work by simplifying grant applications and fostering industry collaborations. For a limited time, we are offering a free evaluation of Research Impact to individual researchers, colleges and universities. Sign up for an evaluation or join us for a Research Impact Demo Day, where we demonstrate the matchmaking features of Research Impact.
Finally, are you curious about this month’s solar eclipse on April 8? I have had the honour of being affiliated with Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics for many years and am pleased to share an article on the eclipse from their monthly newsletter.
Thank you for your support and we hope that you enjoy this month’s edition of Profound Connections!
Tomasz Bednarz Director of Strategic Researcher Engagement NVIDIA Photography by Quentin Jones.
Tomasz Bednarz is passionate about connecting dots – whether between scientific concepts, across academic disciplines or to develop collaborations that bring people together to conduct ground-breaking research. “My team at NVIDIA actively engages with top researchers and premier research institutions that do compelling, computationally intense work to solve some of the world’s most challenging scientific problems,” says Tomasz.
Tomasz grew up in Bukowno, near Krakow in Poland, where he was enthusiastic about low-level mathematics and how computers worked. “My family wasn’t rich but did everything to support me in my education. It was very hard for them to get my first computer, a wonderful 8-bit Commodore C64. Very quickly, I started to be very interested in demos, graphics and how they were produced.” Tomasz became fascinated by the monthly Commodore 64 magazine C64+4 and the pages of hexadecimal numbers it contained and was wowed when he realized that he could enter those numbers into his computer to produce music or visuals.
When he was in his mid-teens, Tomasz’s parents replaced the Commodore 64 with an IBM PC XT 12MHz – which came without fancy software or graphics. “Then, I wanted to learn from the bottom up how the processor worked and how to use Assembly x86 to program it. I was very lucky to get a reference book on Assembly x86 from the local high school and thought the best way I could learn would be to write computer viruses.” He developed three viruses that spread across the globe, but all were harmless by design. “After 6 months, I really wanted to find something other than writing viruses to drive my further learning,” he says.
Tomasz (AKA Warlock of Amnesty / Absence) counts himself lucky to have been living in Europe at that time, where Demoscene, an international underground computer subculture focused on producing demos that are the product of extreme programming and self-expression, was being developed and used by coders and musicians. “Demoscene is now accepted by UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage in several countries. At the time, in the early 1990’s, we were pushing the limits of creativity, using very, very slow computers to make inspiring visualizations synchronized with tracked music. All from scratch, with no books or internet to consult. By experimenting, I learned how to use lots of coding tricks to express myself visually – it was my very first school of life in aesthetics. I also learned how to build a Virtual Reality engine from scratch.” A few examples of Tomasz’s Demoscene award-winning coding works are Revolt from 1995, Voodka from 1996, Nie! from 1998, Syndrom-X from 1998 and his ACM SIGGRAPH blog post on Demoscene.
At the time, Demoscene participants used floppy disks to record code to exchange with fellow users across Europe. “At one point, I got into trouble with the post office when I started receiving 20 fat envelopes every day, each containing floppy disks. They wondered what I was up to!”
Tomasz studied physics in university, at the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow, because he wanted to do something different than just basic computer science, and outside of his comfort zone. He had co-founded a software engineering company and was completing his Master’s degree when he received a call from his academic supervisor who was visiting Kyushu University in Japan, encouraging him to apply for entry to the PhD program there. “The only thing I knew about Japan was what I had learned about samurai from movies. But I decided to go outside of my comfort zone, completed the application, and was accepted,” Tomasz says.
Part of the application process was writing a proposal on what would be his PhD topic – magnetic hydrodynamics and using magnetic fields to play with gravity. “I knew almost nothing about this new topic but was very curious. I submitted the proposal and was accepted to the program with a scholarship. The call from my professor came in May and I was in Japan by September of that year,” he adds.
Tomasz believes that experimentation is an essential part of innovation. “Experiment to find your passion – it can transform your life,” he says. His academic and professional career paths reflect this view. He took a chance on moving to a country he knew little about to complete a PhD he hadn’t intended to pursue and followed up with an MBA in order to learn about leadership, strategy and how to manage people and organizations. Tomasz’s professional path has included working on the Nintendo NDS platform to develop low-level graphics code for a car racer game, leading a Visual/Hybrid Analytics Team at CSIRO’s Data61, and setting up and serving as Director and Head of Visualization at the Expanded Perception and Interaction Centre (EPICentre), a pioneering high-performance visualisation facility that boasted the highest resolution VR system in the world at ~120 Million pixels in 3D.
Tomasz has for many years served the international computer graphics community through his active participation as a volunteer with ACM SIGGRAPH, a global non-profit organization serving the evolution of computer graphics and interactive techniques. ACM SIGGRAPH, among other professional activities, produces two annual conferences that are world’s largest, most influential annual meetings and exhibitions in computer graphics and interactive techniques. Tomasz was ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2019 Conference Chair when the conference was held for the very first time in Brisbane, Australia and attracted 5,120 participants from around the world. He currently serves as a SIGGRAPH Asia Conference Advisory Group (SACAG) Chair, contributing to the future of SIGGRAPH Asia conferences and connecting the global research community, and is a voting director of the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee. Over the last ten years, his volunteer roles within the organization have included Computer Animation Festival Jury member, Courses Chair, Virtual Augmented and Mixed Reality Jury, Frontiers Chair, reviewer, and conference panelist and presenter.
“I am very passionate about the role I’m in now. I love working at NVIDIA which is known to drive the graphics industry, AI, and many innovative research and applications,” says Tomasz. His role in building a team of researcher DevRels from a range of disciplines to work with top researchers around the world connects all the dots of his academic career and team-building experience. “Our team has deep conversations about science with researchers to learn about what they’re working on and about long-term trends. We want research labs to be successful and we can contribute to their success by mentoring graduate students and post-docs and helping researchers to take their research to the next level by using NVIDIA-developed technology, tools, and hardware,” he adds.
“My academic focus and my career have been all about connecting dots that were not previously connected,” says Tomasz. His work at NVIDIA, working with people from around the world with expertise in a range of disciplines, is helping to discover the new research superstars, the innovations they are building, and is developing a network of networks that will truly drive innovation to the next level.
Jennifer T. Lee Vice-Chairwoman, Deloitte Board Member, University Lecturer and Executive in Residence at Rotman School of Business
Jennifer Lee recently participated in an International Women’s Day panel at her alma mater, the University of Waterloo, where she spoke on Three Life Lessons on Inclusivity, which capture her perspective on work, community and life:
Accept your identity. Own your heritage.
Tell your story. People want to hear your journey.
Have a mindset of abundance. Pay it forward and shine a spotlight on others.
Jennifer’s world view is largely shaped by her heritage. Her father was born in China, and at age five was instructed by his parents to find a way to Hong Kong to earn money to feed the family. Like many others escaping poverty, he ended up swimming to Hong Kong on a tire despite the inherent dangers of crossing a vast body of water. “My father was the oldest child – he had no choice but to go,” says Jennifer. “He worked in a bakery from age 5 to age 10 before joining another family on a boat to Fiji, where he eventually met my mother, and they found their way to Canada.”
Jennifer’s parents emigrated to Canada and settled in Belleville, Ontario. “I was born in Canada, but am acutely aware that I come from an immigrant background. I have an allergic reaction to privilege and entitlement. When you come from humble immigrant beginnings, you don’t have the luxury of being entitled. All you are taught is resilience,” she says.
Jennifer grew up in Belleville, where she earned a bursary to study at an independent high school and became very involved in martial arts. “From age 14 to 18, I was the captain of the Canadian Martial Arts team and travelled around the world in that role. That experience taught me that I wanted a global life and career which involved solving big problems for the world or business.”
Queen’s University offered Jennifer a modest scholarship, but her final choice of university was determined thanks to information provided by her mother. “She knew nothing about Canadian universities, but opened a book one day, read about the University of Waterloo’s Applied Studies and International Trade specialization and pointed it out to me. I didn’t know about UW or its reputation – but decided that this was the right program for me because it had the world ‘International’ in it. I felt like I belonged there.”
The Bachelor of Arts with International Trade Specialization was a very competitive program where students were accepted in second year. “I worked really hard in my first year to get into the program. In a world where I was always achieving, going to Waterloo was eye-opening because of the calibre of students and competitive internship programs. And my Chinese parents made it clear that failure was not an option!”
Jennifer was successful and, as a second-year intern, was recruited by AT&T in Hong Kong where she worked for a year in Mergers and Acquisitions to build the telecom network in India. While in Hong Kong, she worked incredible hours, met her extended family in China for the first time, and celebrated her 19th birthday.
Her next internship took her to Stuttgart, Germany to work for Hewlett-Packard for a year. Germany became her home base for another two years while she finished her degree. She and her German boyfriend (now husband) met when she was 17 years old in an airport, and had started dating long distance. They lived in Germany together before she moved back to Canada, continuing their long-distance relationship.
Jennifer’s career at Deloitte started with a position, based largely in New York, in corporate strategy. She left Deloitte after 4 years to move to Universal Studios for a short time before realizing that the position as a national marketing manager for blockbuster movie releases wasn’t right for her. She decided to apply to the Executive MBA program at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, but was initially rejected as being deemed too young. After challenging the decision, she was accepted as the youngest student to be admitted to the Executive MBA program.
While completing the Executive MBA, Jennifer joined Bell Canada in a number of management roles at the company. An opportunity to expand her international business experience to Asia presented itself when she was contacted by a former classmate who was serving as head of USAID in Central Asia. He invited her to apply for a position to restructure microfinance in Azerbaijan and, although she had no experience in the area and was certain that there was no possibility that she would be hired, she submitted a 10-page proposal on how to restructure the banks. She was offered the job, only to learn that it was a non-paid position. She accepted it for a four-month term, with Bell Canada giving her the opportunity to take a leave of absence. “I moved to Azerbaijan and worked on stabilizing 27 microfinance banks and their plan for non-restricted revenue generation. As a result, I became very interested in microfinance,” she adds.
“After Bell Canada, I returned to Deloitte and became a partner. Deloitte allowed me to take short breaks each year to return to work with the Azerbaijani microfinance banks,” she says. Jennifer’s deep interest in microfinance and the impact of empowering women expanded her work with the Asian Credit Fund in Kazakhstan. Her passion for elevating women out of poverty became a core tenant of her personal growth. Her focus on microfinance continues as Jennifer serves as a member of the board of directors of Windmill Microlending, the only national charity that provides affordable loans to skilled immigrants and refugees so that they are able to leverage their skills in order to work in Canada.
At Deloitte, Jennifer led the Global Financial Advisory clients and markets and orchestrated the company’s Global’s NextGen Program, establishing a global pipeline of successful female executives to take on global leadership roles in her business unit. She also led Deloitte Global’s pandemic response and has been recognized for her impact as one of the top Global Future Leaders in Consulting by Consulting Magazine and as the Manulife Mentor of the Year by Ascend Canada.
Jennifer serves as Executive in Residence and on the faculty at the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management, where she works with the next generation of executives by teaching “Management Consulting in an Uncertain World” to second-year MBA students.
“There are real problems to be solved in the world,” says Jennifer. She has realized her capacity to work, and wants to balance that with making an impact in the community, both locally and internationally. In addition to her work in microfinance, in Canada through Windmill Microlending, and in Asia through her work in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, Jennifer recently joined the board of directors of Trillium Health Partners. She co-leads the investment committee for the GROW Giving Ring of Women, a giving circle dedicated to Canadian charities focused on women, children and poverty reduction.
“Mentoring is huge for me,” says Jennifer. “I benefited from mentorship and sponsorship throughout my career, and I feel it is time to pay it forward by elevating women and minorities at Deloitte and in our communities.” She counts Margaret Finney, her high school English teacher, who taught her about literature, how to speak in public and introduced her to ways of thinking, as an important personal mentor. “I credit everything that I accomplished to my martial arts career and Miss Finney. My high school teacher really ‘saw’ me. Through her, I know what it feels like to be included, seen, heard and appreciated.”
Jennifer’s passion for working and contributing internationally is also reflected in her family’s priorities. “I care that my two sons are good people and that they make an impact in the world.” Her family is global and adventurous – she has traveled all over the world with her husband and sons. “I’ve lived in five countries and plan on living in five more!” she adds.
A bold, inspiring leader, Jennifer creates global transformation for her clients at Deloitte and brings her considerable expertise and passion for driving local and global impact through her volunteerism and board work. “There has been a big shift at this stage of my life,” she notes. “I am learning to be careful about how I spend my time so that what I do reflects my values and where I want to make an impact.”
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!
March is Women’s History Month, an annual celebration of the vital role and contributions of women to society. Profound Impact is proud to celebrate women through the stories you’ll read in this month’s issue of Profound Connections, as well as activities we’re sponsoring throughout the month.
This month’s Impact Story profiles Zainab Azim, a young woman whose passion for space, education, neuroscience and public policy has inspired her to found an organization that works towards providing access to quality education, serve as a mentor in the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs Space4Women program and present her research to audiences around the world – all before completing her undergraduate degree! Read about Zainab and her plans for expanding her work in mentoring and in the policy space to empower young girls and women interested in pursuing space and STEM fields.
In this month’s Researcher Spotlight we feature Julita Vassileva, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Saskatchewan. You’ll learn about Julita’s passion for promoting the status of women in computer science and in all areas of science and engineering where women are underrepresented. You can also learn about her ground-breaking research on applying AI to solve educational and social problems.
International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated on March 8 each year and the theme for IWD 2024 is Inspire Inclusion. Profound Impact is proud to be a sponsor of IWD 2024 events presented by WCT-WR, the Waterloo Region Chapter of Women in Communications and Technology. WCT-WR will host two live events on March 8 and March 27 that will include conversations featuring trailblazing professionals in the arts and culture sector, entertainment, and musical interludes. Full information about those events and registration information is available here.
In last month’s newsletter, we announced the launch of Women Funding Women (WFW). Founded by myself, Profound Impact board chair Deborah Rosati and Lara Zink, VP of Client Service and Development at Delaney Capital Management, WFW is a collective working to address the funding gap faced by women-led ventures.
We’re excited about the incredible energy generated by WFW’s two-day launch event on February 7 and 8. Our keynote speaker was Joanna Griffiths, founder and President at Knix, who shared her story with our collective.
You can also tune into the From Fear to Fire podcast, where I speak with Heather Hansen O’Neill about how WFW is leading the charge to challenge established norms within the venture capital sphere, redefining the landscape for women founders and funders.
Are you a researcher looking for the perfect funding match? For a limited time, Profound Impact is offering a free evaluation of our AI-powered tool, Research Impact, to individual researchers, colleges and universities. You can view a video here or sign up for a live demonstration during one of our Demo Days.
Thank you for your support and we hope that you enjoy this month’s edition of Profound Connections!
Professor of Computer Science University of Saskatchewan
Julita Vassileva has been acclaimed both for the excellence of her research in Artificial Intelligence and Education, User Modelling and User-Adaptive Systems, Multi-Agent Systems, Trust and Reputation Mechanisms, Incentive Mechanisms, Online Communities and Social Computing, and her passion for promoting the status of women in computer science and in all areas of science and engineering where women are underrepresented.
Born and educated in Sofia, Bulgaria, Julita wanted to be a poet and writer as a teenager. But Bulgaria was a socialist country, freedom of speech was severely constrained, and only those whose creativity flew in the permitted channels could make a living as poets or writers. How did she choose a career in science? “I come from a family of scientists,” she says. “My grandfather was a professor in biochemistry. My mother was an associate professor of chemistry and my father – of physics.”
She continues, “I hated math in primary school and wasn’t very good at it until we started learning geometry in grade 5. Suddenly I was captured by the simplicity of images and elegance of geometry as compared to the formal rules to be followed in algebra.”
Julita competed to be accepted to the Sofia Mathematics Gymnasium high school and she credits one great teacher, who taught her class for only three months in grade 9, for her enthusiasm for math. “The teacher creates the vocation,” says Julita. “He taught math in a completely different way. He didn’t follow the textbook but taught us as though we were university students, starting with complex numbers instead of teaching how to solve quadratic equations by ‘Just remember this formula’.” We saw the problem stretched on the plane with an imaginary axis and a real one instead of squeezed on a linear axis and suddenly the solution – the Viet formula – made perfect sense. I saw the link between algebra and geometry. The whole class was hooked. He was also an opera singer. When a student solved a problem well at the blackboard, he would sing an aria!”
Julita studied mathematics and mechanics at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski and, after completing her Ph.D. in mathematics and computer science, she accepted a position as a Research Associate at the Federal Armed Forces University in Munich. “This was after the fall of the Iron Curtain and it was now possible to travel from Bulgaria to the West,” says Julita.
Although she enjoyed her time in Germany and wanted to pursue a career in research and academia, the position was limited to a five-year term. Julita’s home country was in deep economic turmoil, so returning to Bulgaria was not an option. She decided to make the move to Canada after receiving an offer from the University of Saskatchewan, where she would work in one of the five leading groups in the world conducting research in Applied AI, AI in Education and building good systems for teaching.
Julita’s ground-breaking research is focused on applying AI to solve education and social problems and includes intelligent tutoring that incorporates personalization and user modeling, multi-agent systems that build trust to ensure technology is seen as beneficial, designing incentive mechanisms that encourage participation in online communities and persuasive technology that facilitates behaviour changes to benefit users and their communities.
“Since people are motivated by different things, I am particularly interested in personalization approaches that tailor incentives for users depending on their personal features and the features of their groups and communities,” she says about her focus on building successful online communities and social computing applications.
Julita is passionate about science outreach and promoting the advancement of women and minorities in Computer Science. As the NSERC Cameco Chair for Women in Science and Engineering (WISE)/Prairies from 2005-2011, she developed the Science Ambassadors outreach program, which enriches classroom science learning in remote Indigenous communities. “Indigenous people are extremely underrepresented in Science and Engineering. What if we could encourage more women from Indigenous communities to enter these fields through a program that brings science students to the north to help the teachers teach science in interesting ways and to serve as role models?”
Julita credits colleagues Chary Rangacharyulu from the Department of Physics and Lee Wilson from the Department of Chemistry for the idea of Science Ambassadors. As Chair, she had the budget to make it happen by paying a summer job honorarium for University students to work with teachers and students in remote communities for one month. The program, which reaches over 2,000 children annually in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, covers the cost of flying university students to northern communities that have trouble attracting teachers. These students consult in advance with teachers to understand how they can help, and then develop and help deliver material based on those discussions.
The Science Ambassadors program has been active for 16 years and continues to be operated by the College of Arts and Science after Julita’s term as NSERC WISE Chair ended. “I am very proud of the program and the impact it has had on bringing a larger cohort of Indigenous students to the University of Saskatchewan,” she says.
In addition to the prestigious NSERC WISE Chair, Julita’s research and outreach work has been recognized with the University of Saskatchewan College of Arts and Science Distinguished Scientist Award in 2021 and with a Saskatoon YWCA’s Women of Distinction Award for Science and Technology in 2015. She has received appreciation letters from the Hon. Senator Lillian Dyck, and from the professional societies ACM and IEEE for her work on promoting women in science and engineering. She is proud of the many “Best Paper” and especially the “Best Student Paper” award certificates for her students that decorate a wall in her office.
Julita is enthusiastic about Saskatchewan and her work. “I felt as though I could finally breathe freely when I moved to Saskatchewan. I love the climate, the blue skies and the clean, white snow. And I love my research and working with my students. My happiest moments are when we hit “Submit” just before midnight after collaborating on a paper in the cloud for many hours with my students to meet a publication deadline!”
You can see more about Julita’s career and impact in the visualization below.
Zainab Azim’s interest in and passion for space was sparked at the age of 12. “Some parents read bedtime stories to their children. My father showed us documentaries about space.”
Currently in the final semester of her Bachelor of Science undergraduate program at the University of Toronto, Zainab designed her studies to focus on a mix of the interests she is passionate about, including neuroscience, astrophysics, public policy, education and society.
“When I was younger, space was everything to me. When I reflected on why I cared about space, it wasn’t just about discovery and exploration. It was about the connection between people, the community and how we are part of something much bigger than ourselves.”
Zainab has made it her goal to inspire girls to study STEM subjects. In 2023, she presented the research she had conducted during high school and in university at the World Space Forum 2023 in Vienna. “This was the first world space forum and not a lot of people were talking about the educational aspect of space. I didn’t meet all of the stated requirements for presenting my research, but decided to apply anyway. They thought my work was interesting and they took a chance on me.”
While in Vienna, Zainab met with representatives from UNOOSA, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, to talk about how to engage young people in space studies. As a result of those discussions, she now serves as a mentor in the UNOOSA Space4Women, a program dedicated to empowering young girls and women interested in pursuing space and STEM fields. The Space4Women program selected Zainab as the Youngest Role Model for Gender Equality and STEM.
“My dream is to help other people’s dreams come true and education is the way to do that,” says Zainab. Education has been a huge part of her life. She attended a Montessori school that was led by Pakistani-Canadian women – people who looked like her. “That experience was foundational in helping me explore my interests”, she says.
High school was a very different experience. Although she participated in an International Baccalaureate (IB) program, much of her love for learning came from outside of the classroom. “In my later years of high school, I knew that education was something I wanted to focus on. I wanted to explore how to use neuroscience to develop better ways of delivering education and how to make those opportunities available to everyone.”
To help meet that goal, Zainab founded GIVE (Global Initiative and Vision for Education), an organization that works towards providing access to quality education. GIVE also aims to develop a holistic 21st-century educational model based on neuroscience and psychology research to foster the creativity, curiosity, character, and innovation needed for solving the issues facing our planet.
Zainab works to inspire and mobilize the global community as a speaker at international forums, including the inaugural Space Girls Space Women Exhibition in Paris, the 27th Workshop on Space Technology for Socio-Economic Benefits in Washington, DC and the Campionaria Generale Internazionale in Bari, Italy. In May 2023, she participated in the inaugural Emmy Noether National Virtual Forum as a panelist in Women in Conversation with The Honourable Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario on The Power of WHY? Zainab emphasized collaboration, urging Canadian educators and policy-makers to foster belonging, purpose, and excitement in students. “We need pedagogies that connect content to context. We need purpose-based, community-based, collaborative opportunities for learning. When students feel like they are a part of something greater than themselves…we see that that makes a big difference in their motivation, their sense of belonging, and their interest in pursuing STEM,” she says.
While completing her undergraduate degree, Zainab works at NEPC, the National Education Policy Centre, in the US. NEPC provides high-quality information in support of democratic deliberation about education policy. Her work there contributes to learning how public education can be strengthened centrally in the US and to see if those learnings can be applied elsewhere.
Zainab is looking forward to pursuing her Master’s degree and has applied to graduate schools in the US, Canada and the UK with the goal of conducting research on education policy with a concentration on neuro-education, STEM and space studies.
“I’m most excited to find new ways to continue to expand the work I’ve been doing in mentoring and in the policy space. I have a lot to learn from grad school and the other work that I’m doing with NEPC and UNOOSA,” she says.
“I see myself as giving forward. My driving force in continuing to volunteer as a mentor with UNOOSA to advance the mission of creating greater accessibility to space and STEM for more people, while also working at GIVE to ensure that the systemic changes needed in our education system are developed and implemented allowing not only girls, but all children the opportunity to thrive and have access to their future.”
You can see more about Zainab’s education and impact in the visualization below.
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!
The first few weeks of 2024 have been busy as the Profound Impact team continues to work with universities and colleges and industry partners across Canada to deploy our AI-powered Research Impact tool, which matches researchers with the best research funding opportunities in their field and helps find industry partners to support successful grant applications. Through our innovative new partnership with CS-Can|Info-Can, the first of a series of collaborations with researchers across Canada, Profound Impact is providing CS-Can|Info-Can member Computer Science departments and researchers with free evaluations of Research Impact. Interested in learning more about Research Impact? You can view a video here or sign up for a live demonstration during one of the bi-weekly Demo Days that the Profound Impact team will be presenting throughout 2024.
I was pleased to share my insights on building Profound Impact’s team and our successful and healthy small business culture in the Grow a Small Business podcast. Profound Impact and my work were also featured in an edition of Women’s Biz podcast, where I talked about my journey in information security, my role in commercializing Elliptic Curve Cryptography, and the inspiration behind founding Profound Impact.
In August of 2023, Profound Impact announced the successful close of a $3.125 million pre-seed funding round of nearly all female investors, including many first-time angel investors. Inspired by this achievement, I joined forces with Profound Impact board chair Deborah Rosati and Lara Zink, VP of Client Service and Development at Delaney Capital Management, to create Women Funding Women Inc. (WFW). This collective, which challenges the status quo in the venture capital world and with first-time female angel investors by breaking barriers and building bridges for a more inclusive investment community, will launch in Toronto on February 7. You can read more about how WFW plans to change the VC landscape in Disruption Magazine’s recent article.
In this month’s Impact Story, you’ll meet WFW co-founder Lara Zink and learn more about her journey from working as a political aide to a successful career in finance. In our Researcher Spotlight, we profile Dr. Luigi Benedicenti, Professional Engineer, researcher and Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science at the University of New Brunswick, whose career took him from Genoa, Italy to Regina, Saskatchewan to Atlantic Canada.
We hope you enjoy this month’s edition of Profound Connections!
Dean, Faculty of Computer Science University of New Brunswick
Dr. Luigi Benedicenti joined the research community in Canada after receiving his Laurea in Electrical Engineering and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Genoa in Italy. A Professional Engineer licensed in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick and a licensed Italian Engineer, Luigi joined the University of New Brunswick as Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science, Canada’s original faculty of computer science, in 2017.
Luigi’s interest in software engineering was sparked in high school when he worked on a version of a computer game being developed by Electronic Arts. The game was never released, but his appreciation for making and playing games led him to study computer engineering in his hometown of Genoa. “My father, who was a surgeon, was devastated when I didn’t follow in his career footsteps,” says Luigi. “But he did support me as I followed my passion.”
His journey from Italy to Canada came as a result of his academic supervisor’s move from Genoa to Calgary. Luigi traveled to Calgary to meet with his supervisor while completing his Ph.D. and applied for positions in Canada after graduation. He started his tenure at the University of Regina in 1998 as a lecturer. “When I landed in Regina, I didn’t have the right clothes. I was prepared for the weather in Calgary, but not for Regina’s temperatures of -30 to -50 degrees. The wind was so cold and deep that my eyelids froze the first time I walked to work!”
Luigi describes his 19 years at the University of Regina, where he served as a professor in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science and terms as Associate Dean for Special Projects, Associate Vice-President, Academic, and on the university’s Board of Governors as faculty representative, as an unforgettable experience during which he learned a lot and was afforded many opportunities for growth and innovation. While in Saskatchewan, Luigi developed strong connections with industry through his participation as a board member for SpringBoard West Innovations and SaskInteractive and as a Research Professor at TRLabs, where he conducted research in software engineering, mobile agents and media provision for 11 years.
“Being an academic involves, by definition, a relationship with the public. We are contributing to the common good and there are many ways to do that. Ours is a collective effort that has a significant impact – both via our research findings and through preparation of the next generation of researchers through teaching,” notes Luigi. “I love teaching and research in more or less equal measure. They provide a nice balance and generate ideas as I move from one to the other. Teaching often provides surprising insights to my research.”
Luigi’s research focuses on Software Agents, Software Process, and New Media Technology and he specializes in program management and technology transfer. His interdisciplinary work has provided opportunities to collaborate with colleagues in Europe, South East Asia and across North America. Although his role as Dean limits the time he is able to devote to research, Luigi continues to publish regularly, run conferences and symposia in his field, and has been a member of the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) from 2014 to 2021. “Being on a national accreditation board has been an exciting and challenging experience and I am humbled by my colleagues, who always bring contributions of the highest quality,” he says.
He is proud of the research excellence within the Faculty of Computer Science. “The Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity is one of the top three such research institutes in Canada,” notes Luigi. The outstanding young researchers within the institute balance between pure and applied research and provide immediate technology transfer to industry members through graduates who join those companies.
Spectral, UNB’s spatial computing training and research lab, combines virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality to bring together the digital and physical. Under the leadership of Dr. Scott Bateman, the lab conducts research with applications in areas including aerospace, health training, therapy and rehabilitation. “It’s one of the best User Interface/Human Computing research labs in North America,” says Luigi.
One of the faculty’s newest research ventures, the Research Institute in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (RIDSAI), was developed in response to New Brunswick’s needs in the areas of AI and data science. “RIDSAI does more than conduct pure research,” says Luigi. “The institute is developing algorithms, applications and literacy in machine learning and data science to graduate students who will have the tools to succeed in a world that relies on these technologies.” RIDSAI researchers from a range of disciplines work to develop solutions for community and industry partners in areas ranging from policy and planning to entertainment, agriculture and health.
Luigi is deeply committed to excellence in the classroom and collaborative decision-making and is appreciative of the flexibility, interest and engagement of the members of the Faculty of Computer Science at the University of New Brunswick. “We can do something great and everyone can contribute in their own way,” he says. “Our collaborative culture leads to the good of the faculty as we work together on the mission and targets identified in the vision document we developed almost four years ago.”
A self-described passionate computer geek who loves programming, software engineering, computers, video games, and everything IT, Luigi also enjoys playing and creating music, traveling, and e-biking and is a pizza aficionado. As for his future plans, he says: “There are three stages to a career. I am exiting the middle and starting to prepare for the final stage. For me, retirement is about choice. I plan to work on research that has been postponed, experiment with pizza dough and enjoy hiking, skiing and life in general.”
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It was serendipity that brought Lara Zink from Vancouver to the University of Western Ontario (now Western University) and the keen interest she developed in politics in grades 11 and 12 led her to study political science. “I visited a great aunt in London while in high school and thought the Western campus was amazing,” says Lara.
Lara’s journey, from graduating with an Honours BA degree in political science to working as part of the federal government team that negotiated the NAFTA agreement to a long and successful career in finance, was a non-traditional one. Her experience makes her a role model dedicated to helping women overcome barriers to entry and to ensure that leadership, representation, and gender equity exist within the finance industry.
Lara’s degree in political science and experience working with the Young Conservatives as a teenager led to a role as political assistant to federal Member of Parliament Michael Wilson, then Minister of International Trade and Industry Canada. “I loved my two years working in Ottawa,” says Lara. “I was able to speak with members of Parliament and their staff about the benefits of NAFTA to Canada and traveled to Washington for the final stages of negotiation of the agreement.”
After two years on Parliament Hill, Lara wrote the GMAT exam and applied to business schools, including the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto where she ultimately earned her MBA. Although she had hoped to return to Vancouver after graduation, job opportunities were more plentiful in Toronto. After considering options in marketing and private wealth, Lara chose to enter a corporate lending training program with RBC in Toronto. She started in business banking and moved to another lending group in RBC’s financial institutions group before embarking on a 20-year career in global equity sales and trading on the trading floor at RBC Capital Markets.
When she left RBC in 2019, Lara paused and considered her next career move. “While exploring job opportunities during the pandemic lockdown, I threw my name in the hat for the position of President and Chief Executive Officer of Women in Capital Markets,” says Lara. She joined WCM, the largest network of women in finance whose mission is to accelerate equity, diversity and inclusion in finance, in 2021. Lara led WCM in developing programs to unite the finance industry in supporting EDI in capital markets and delivering research, programming and strategic value to the organization’s sponsors, members and stakeholders.
Lara left WCM in September of 2023 to join a woman-led asset management company, Delaney Capital Management, where she currently serves as Vice President of Client Service and Development.
Lara’s commitment to embracing equity and helping women succeed, both in the finance sector and as company founders, is reflected in her role as a member of the board of Canadian Women’s Network, where she will work to help Canadian female founders grow and secure funding. She recently joined Sherry Shannon-Vanstone and Deborah Rosati to create Women Funding Women (WFW), a collective aimed at addressing the persistent funding gap faced by women founders in North America.
WFW, which will launch on February 7 in Toronto, brings together organizations and resources committed to empowering women, offering gender equality, and catalyzing economic growth by increasing access to seed funding for women-led ventures. Lara’s vast experience in capital markets and her passion for driving change and ensuring women’s success is key to the work that WFW will do to increase access to funding for women founders.
Lara’s professional success in the finance sector, her belief that strategy and culture differentiate organizations, and her work as a leader and mentor for women – as entrepreneurs, funders and investors – have made her an influential champion for equity, diversity and inclusion, and a powerful initiator of change for women’s access to venture funding.
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!
Profound Impact is excited to start the new year with the announcement of a new partnership with CS-Can|Info-Can, a professional organization representing more than 60 Computer Science departments and faculties across Canada.
CS-Can|Info-Can and Profound Impact worked together in 2023 to produce two webinars on researcher and industry collaboration. Recordings of those webinars are available for viewing here.
This new partnership provides an exciting benefit to the CS-Can|Info-Can members – a free evaluation of Research Impact, which uses advanced AI to match researchers with the best research funding opportunities in their field and helps find industry partners to support successful grant applications.
Would you like to see Research Impact in action? You can view a video here or sign up for a live demonstration during one of the bi-weekly Demo Days that the Profound Impact team will be presenting throughout 2024.
This month, we’re proud to present profiles of two 2023 Impactful Action Award finalists. These finalists exemplify what it means to make a profound impact in the world, and we are honoured to share their stories. You’ll meet Leigh Zachary Bursey, an activist, journalist, former three-term politician, singer-songwriter, recording artist, and author, and Lynn Smith, a proud member of the Peavine Métis Settlement who is leading her northern community through a significant change to take control over monitoring the impact of climate change on their land and waterways.
The Profound Impact team is excited about our plans for 2024 and looks forward to sharing those with you. Enjoy this month’s edition of Profound Connections and best wishes for a productive and happy new year!
