“Mitacs was the first organization to believe in us... Without Mitacs’ support, I believe that we could not have gotten to the stage that we are, with BrainShield almost ready to hit the market and revolutionize the concept of helmet protection.”

“The business skills I obtained from Mitacs Step made significant contributions to my success. I believe that it’s important to have career-enhancing skills, not simply technical skills.”

Rohit had come to Canada in 2012 to pursue an MBA focused on entrepreneurship at the University of Victoria. During his program, he undertook a Mitacs Accelerate internship with Limespot, a small e-commerce start-up with five employees, a far cry from his experience at Blackberry.

“I wasn’t one of those people who started university with plans to launch a company,” said Jamie Yuen. “But the success of our Mitacs internship and our partnership with BMI made starting Copperstone Technologies in 2014 the logical next step.”

“My internship shed light on several needed improvements in the quality of haptic rendering. I realized there was an opportunity to create a business based on this.”

Innovation, whether researcher, technology, or social, is widely viewed as being “gender blind” or “gender neutral,” places where male and female do not matter. But according to Sarah, this is the first misconception we need to confront.

“Mitacs was critical to me connecting with Triton, and the skills that I picked up during my internship led to my job at the company, giving me the ability to secure the contracts on my own... And from there, I founded my company.”

Montreal-based start-up incubator TandemLaunch is the recipient of the Mitacs Industry Award for Exceptional Leadership.

Mitacs Elevate alumnus Richard Beal is the recipient of the First Place, $20,000 prize of the inaugural Mitacs Entrepreneur Awards for his company, COFOVO Energy.

Mitacs Accelerate alumnus Guillaume Brault is the recipient of the second place, $15,000 prize of the inaugural Mitacs Entrepreneur Awards with co-founder Viviane Bélair for their company, Inova Source.

Mitacs Step alumnae Kit Chen and Neesha Desai are the recipients of the Third Place, $10,000 prize at the inaugural Mitacs Entrepreneur Awards for their company, Alieo Games.

Mitacs Accelerate alumnus Clayton Hiles was the recipient of an Honourable Mention at the inaugural Mitacs Entrepreneur Awards.