After doing her PhD at the University of Saskatchewan and returning to her home province of BC for a residency, Shawnda had a growing concern about how testing for mental illness and cognitive impairment was being done.

Currently, people have to go through lengthy tests of their concentration, learning, memory, reasoning, language, and other skills. Through Elevate, Shawnda began a two-year fellowship with Copeman Healthcare Centre, researching how much this process could be streamlined while maintaining its reliability.

Mitacs thanks the Government of Canada and the Government of Ontario for their support of the Accelerate research internship in this story. Across Canada, the Accelerate program also receives support from Alberta Innovates, the Government of British Columbia, the Government of New Brunswick, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Government of Nova Scotia, the Government of Prince Edward Island, the Government of Quebec, the Government of Saskatchewan and Research Manitoba.

Chelation Partners’ approach to fighting antibiotic-resistant diseases is a novel one: cutting off their supply of iron. Without iron, bacteria have a tough time growing, and they’re more vulnerable to the effects of antibiotics. What’s more, Chelation Partners has discovered this tactic could also be applied to the fight against cancer. Cancer cells seem to be more sensitive to lower iron levels than other cells in the body, so reducing the availability of the metal might restrict the growth of cancer and boost the effectiveness of chemotherapy and radiation treatment.

Supported by Mitacs, the partnership between Trojan Technologies and Western University has grown considerably over the last four years. Since 2010, Trojan has invested a significant portion of its research budget to hire Mitacs interns, an amount that has been more than matched through Mitacs funding for a total of $1.5 million in R&D spending.

Currently, the company is building a three-year research program that will further expand their collaborations to include research on opaque fluids, as well as UV treatment of ballast water, waste water, and drinking water. 

It all started when TandemLaunch’s founder, Helge Seetzen, was given a chance to participate in the Mitacs Accelerate program while he was a PhD student at UBC’s Structured Surface Physics lab. In 2002, Helge and a team at the lab developed a new way to control the brightness of visual screens and sold it to audio and cinema giant Dolby Laboratories.

By 2010, he’d formed TandemLaunch, a company that takes young scientists and entrepreneurs in universities and gives them seed money and coaching to transform their ideas into profitable businesses.

Mitacs thanks the Government of Canada and the Government of Ontario for their support of the Accelerate research internship in this story. Across Canada, the Accelerate program also receives support from Alberta Innovates, the Government of British Columbia, the Government of New Brunswick, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Government of Nova Scotia, the Government of Prince Edward Island, the Government of Quebec, the Government of Saskatchewan and Research Manitoba.

Teledyne DALSA is a Canadian manufacturer of specialized electronic imaging components with offices in Montreal. The company is a leading manufacturer of heat (infrared) sensors for use in satellites, surveillance and medical applications — fields which attract extensive research and development investment from both government and industry.

Researchers like Yang Yang, a Mitacs Elevate postdoctoral fellow in the Pharmaceutical Orthopaedic Research lab at the University of Alberta, are tackling the problem head-on by developing new treatments for the disease. In partnership with Osteo-Metabolix Pharmaceuticals Inc., Yang has created a new drug that does a better job of healing broken bones.

When Calgary-based Chaordix, a pioneer in the crowdsourcing space, was looking to gain further insight into market research intelligence and analytics, they turned to Mitacs.  We connected the company with intern Khobaib Zaamout, a PhD student in the department of Information and Communication Technology at the University of Calgary.

Together with Ralph and Chris’ guidance, Suzanne put together an application for a Mitacs Accelerate grant which would afford Indie Ink access to a top-level graduate student for her tech idea. Suzanne wanted to develop a platform for a truly interactive and multi-dimensional experience for adult non-fiction book in her catalog: The New Rock Star Philosophy: A Guerilla Blueprint for Digitally Conscious Artists.