Hugo Vihvelin, a master’s student in the School of Biomedical Engineering at Dalhousie University is one of two recipients of the 2015 Mitacs Master's Award for Outstanding Innovation.

But while the Halifax-based startup had worked-out the mechanical design of its brace, its team knew they needed people with expertise in body movement and rehabilitation to test it. That’s where Mitacs Accelerate came in.

“Mitacs gives us access to really good people, as well as to equipment and infrastructure at universities that we — as a small company — could never think of getting otherwise.”

It has been really good to see the strong relationship between researchers and companies in Nova Scotia. I am really happy that Mitacs has given us good connections to industry in Canada so we can see how our research would work in real life.