A New Brunswick biotech start-up is working to keep your food fresh using a revolutionary compound made from an ingredient you might find in your fridge.

Asha Srinivasan, co-founder of Boost Environmental Systems, is a recipient of the Mitacs Global Impact Entrepreneur Award.

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.”