Since he was a young boy in India, Gurpreet Sandhu dreamed of coming to Canada for his post-secondary education at an institution that would provide him with the skills and education he needed to pursue a career and life abroad.

AllerGen’s 50+ trainees learned how to refresh, build and make the most of their existing networks at the Mitacs Step workshop. For AllerGen’s trainees, the benefits of the workshop were immediate with many reporting having put a number of networking tips into practice shortly after the event.

For Mitacs Step student So-Ra Chung, her specialty is in developing micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technologies for use in the aerospace industry using team building and project management skills she learned through Mitacs Step.

When Ali Ahmadi came to Canada to complete a doctorate in applied science, he had a very personal goal of making a difference within cancer research. Using the many skills which he developed through Mitacs Step workshops, Dr. Ahmadi has contributed to a team whose device may do just that.

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.

Gurjit Singh credits the Mitacs Elevate program with facilitating the transition point between postdoctoral education and finding a fulfilling research position. He obtained his Ph.D. (psychology) from the University of Toronto, his M.A. (social psychology) from the University of Waterloo, and his M.Sc. (Audiology) from Western University.

What makes Mitacs Step workshops such crowd pleasers? From professors to participants its rave reviews all around. I sat in on a workshop to see, first-hand, what sets these workshops apart.

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.