“The Mitacs program offered us an opportunity to get support for our project as well as the tools, resources, and people we needed to advance our technology,”

Hamed Hanafi is a busy researcher these days. During the week, the Dalhousie University postdoc is interning with a Halifax-based medical company through a Mitacs Accelerate research project. During the evenings and weekends, he’s pursuing a personal goal of becoming an entrepreneur and getting a passion project off the ground.

“I don’t think I realized I was an entrepreneur at first,” says Jeremy Koenig, founder of Halifax-based genomics start-up, Athletigen. “But then as I got more experience, I started to realize how my background in research could be an asset to me in founding a company — so I did just that.”

She hadn’t considered going abroad as part of her education, but discovering the Globalink Research Internship online prompted a change of heart.

The Mitacs Accelerate internship provided a fantastic opportunity to grow as an engineer in training and to become familiar with the challenges faced in realizing the commercial potential of my research.

If successful, the scope and application of these drugs will be profound, and will have a significant impact on stroke patients.