U of T startups at True Blue Expo take home cash prizes, receive advice from Wealthsimple co-founder

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 15:58:02 +0000

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 03/22/2019 - 11:58

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Catherine Chan, the founder of Honeybee Hub, a communication platform for researchers, talks about her startup during the True Blue Expo, part of U of T's Entrepreneurship Week programming (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Chris Sorensen

Topic

Our Community

True Blue Fund

The Hub

Creative Destruction Lab

Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab

Division of University Advancement

Entrepreneurship Hatchery

Graduate Students

Health Innovation Hub

Impact Centre

Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Research & Innovation

Subheadline

From facial fracture-mending “bone tape” to counterfeit-stymieing authentication technology, the ingenuity of University of Toronto startups was on full display Thursday during an Entrepreneurship Week event held at the MaRS Discovery District.

Dozens of U of T entrepreneurs staffed booths in MaRS’s airy indoor concourse on College Street as part of the True Blue Expo. They spent the day fielding questions about their startups and the often challenging problems they are seeking to solve.

In the case of Nanology Labs, that includes nothing less than brain cancer. The startup took home a $25,000 first prize in the “late-stage” category of an RBC-sponsored pitch competition for its injectable MRI contrast agent built using nanotechnology.

“Current MRI contrast agents aren’t very sensitive … and they’re toxic,” co-founder and CEO Mohammad Ali Amini explained to a panel of judges.

Ali Amini, who is finishing up a PhD at U of T in pharmaceutical sciences, showed a slide that compared MRI scans of a mouse’s skull. The scan using Nanology’s nano-contrast agent spotted the brain tumour that lurked within. The scan performed with a conventional Gadolinium-based contrast agent did not.

Other startups that took home money in the RBC Prize for Innovation and Entrepreneurship included: Puremark ($10,000), which uses a software-based authentication technology to protect high-end western brands from being counterfeited in markets like China; Cohesys ($10,000), which makes a flexible “bone tape” that can be used instead of titanium plates and screws to repair facial fractures; and Sirona Onsite ($5,000), which is building a platform to deliver eye exams and other vision services to people’s homes.

The prizes were presented by U of T Chancellor Rose Patten, who called the university “a wonderful place for students to bring their research to life.”

Earlier in the day, U of T also announced the recipients of the commercialization-focused RBC Post-Doctoral & Graduate Fellowships, which spanned disciplines ranging from machine learning and advanced data analytics to security. There were a total of seven fellows this year – five graduate and two post-doctoral – the most ever awarded under the program.

Representatives from U of T startups fielded questions at the MaRS Discovery District during the True Blue Expo (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Not all of the startups on display were high-tech in nature. Diva Turial is the founder and co-ordinator of Lead with Dignity, a social impact startup that’s hoping to alleviate homelessness, mental health and other related issues in Ontario and further afield, including in Afghanistan.

How? By offering employment support and, in particular, micro-lending strategies to help people launch their own small businesses.

“I was so inspired by the Grameen Bank,” Turial said, referring the microfinance and community development organization founded in Bangladesh in the 1970s. “But we want to make [the loans] interest-free.”

Lead with Dignity is being supported by U of T’s Health Innovation Hub, or H2i, one of nine accelerators on campus. Other on-campus accelerators include the Creative Destruction Lab, Impact Centre, UTEST, The Hub (U of T Scarborough), ICUBE (U of T Mississauga), The Entrepreneurship Hatchery, Start @ UTIAS and the Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab, or DCSIL.

U of T’s expanding entrepreneurship infrastructure – a new, 14-storey U of T innovation centre will break ground this summer across the street from MaRS – has helped launch over 500 companies over the past decade, generating more than $1 billion in investment.

“The U of T entrepreneurship community is Canada's leading engine for research-based startups,” Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation, told attendees at one of the RBC events. “In all sectors and across our three campuses, our faculty and students are building on U of T's world-class excellence and research talent.

"They are getting their ideas into the marketplace in the form of products, services, jobs and companies that are contributing to the Ontario and Canadian economies around the world."

U of T startups will now also have even more help after the university announced Thursday the launch of a new True Blue Fund, which will provide up to $5 million in financial support.

True Blue Fund

U of T startups at True Blue Expo take home cash prizes, receive advice from Wealthsimple co-founder

Read more about the True Blue Fund

Read more about entrepreneurship at U of T