Their research can turn skin cells into blood cells, create new jobs and encourage industry innovation, and there is every indication it will continue to change and improve our lives for years to come.

“I thought I might benefit from learning a little bit more about the business environment, but I didn’t have very high expectations about the workshops themselves,” El Saadany says. It turned out his expectations were to be exceeded by far. In the end, El Saadany took part in half a dozen different Mitacs Step skills development workshops.

Optimization techniques, an emerging innovation, can serve as one of the tools for financial institutions and companies to find better solutions and improve decision-making. With this focus, Mitacs Elevate Fellow Oleksandr Romanko created an industry-academic event called ‘Optimization in Finance and Risk Management’.

For Dr. Rebecca Tittler, the Mitacs Accelerate Quebec internship she undertook with the forestry company AbitibiBowater proved to be “the best of both worlds”, she said, referring to the balance between her academic research independence and working in partnership with industry.