Mitacs Elevate Fellow, Kinfe Tadesse Mengistu has come a long way (literally) to get to where he is now. And congratulations are definitely in order as Kinfe starts his new position as speech scientist for Nuance Communications, a company he’s always dreamed of working for.

Blackbox, which specializes in offering GIS services to the oil and gas sector in Calgary, is a fast-growing company, Gedamu says. “To keep growing, we need to innovate, and in order to innovate, we need to partner with researchers. Mitacs provided me with this kind of opportunity, and now I’d be glad to offer others the same kind of opportunity in a way that would be mutually beneficial,” says Gedamu, who is the Director of product development at Blackbox.