Keynote speaker, October 11:
Prof. M. Cynthia Goh
M. Cynthia Goh is a professor at the Departments of Chemistry, Materials Science & Engineering, Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry, and at the Institute for Management and Innovation and the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. She is the founder and director of the Impact Centre, with the goal to bring science to society. Her research interest centers on the interactions and properties of polymers, biopolymers and interfaces, including the development of instruments for these studies, where she has 100+ publications and 70+ patents. She has expertise in the translation of scientific discovery to technology/products that benefit society and the training of scientist-entrepreneurs. Her research has led to 8 science-based companies co-founded with her students, including Axela (medical diagnostics), Vive Crop Protection (nanotechnology for agriculture), Pueblo Science (not-for-profit for science literacy in low resource settings worldwide). She has created successful training programs for scientist-entrepreneurs, including Entrepreneurship101 (which expanded to thousands registered annually) and Techno (which nucleated and nurtured 140+ student-led, science-based startups). She also currently works on building community-based innovation systems in Canada and in the Philippines, which includes leading a project on lighting up remote villages and developing a virtual library system for remote communities.
Keynote speaker, October 12:
Prof. Ghassan E. Jabbour
Ghassan Jabbour is a Canada Research Chair Tier 1 in Engineered Advanced materials and Devices and Professor of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Ottawa (110 papers; h-index 47). He spent nearly 14 years as Director/Founding Director of large research centres in the area of printed and flexible photonic and electronic devices. He is the editor of several books and symposia proceedings (13) involving photonics, electronics, nanotechnology, and combinatorial approaches to device and materials optimization. He has numerous awards including Best Poster Award (2) from the National Academy of Engineering/Engineering Academy of Japan/Japan Science and Technology Agency 2006 Japan-America Frontiers of Engineering Symposium; Distinguished Professor of Finland Award from the Academy of Finland, and the Hariri Foundation Excellence Award, to mention a few. He is an SPIE Fellow and an EOS Fellow for his achievements in flexible and printed photonics and electronics.