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.

Employee engagement is a buzzword in organizational development circles today, with a variety of approaches touted by the experts. But what if one solution lies in video games?

“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.”

The company was introduced to Mengru Wang, by her supervisor Dr. Eric Aubanel. They agreed to collaborate on a Mitacs Accelerate project, in which Mengru would develop a data visualization utility for EXN/Aero.

Mitacs Elevate participants from Alberta, BC, and Manitoba came together recently for a three-day professional development workshop.