OCE Discovery 09

Ontario Centres of Excellence 2009 Mind to Market Award

The Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) Mind to Market Award honours and celebrates the best OCE-supported research collaboration between the business and research communities, resulting in effective commercialization of leading-edge ideas and solutions. Award recipients exemplify the innovation that is possible when the brightest minds in industry and academia collaborate to address today's most critical issues. The 2009 Mind to Market Award is generously supported by the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS).

The Criteria

Imagination and creativity - the "wow-factor"
Collaboration and partnership - the knowledge exchange
Commercial success - competitive advantage, increased profit, and more.

The Panel

The 2009 Mind to Market Award panel is a nucleus of leading minds in science and commerce in Ontario:

Paul Gilbert (Chair)

Chief Executive Officer,
Quanser

Suzanne Corbeil

Vice President, External Relations,
Canada Foundation for Innovation

Philip Haggerty

Vice President, Corporate Development,
OMERS

Jane Pagel

Vice President, Government & Corporate Affairs,
Jacques Whitford Stantec Ltd.

Dr. Molly Shoichet

Canada Research Chair in Tissue Engineering and
Professor of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry, University of Toronto
President & Founder, Matregen Corp.

Mark Romoff

President and CEO,
Ontario Centres of Excellence

The Finalists

This year's finalists represented some of the best OCE-supported partnerships. Each collaboration demonstrated forward-thinking and possessed tremendous market potential, reinforcing that Ontario is rich in imagination and innovation.

EION Inc. & University of Ottawa

EION has created a significant global impact in rural-digitization by providing voice, video and data communication to emerging markets. Today, it has deployed over 25,000 broadband wireless links in Africa, India, Latin America, Middle East and North America.

StormFisher Biogas & University of Western Ontario

StormFisher Biogas is a renewable energy company that builds, owns and operates biogas plants across North America. Working with the food processing and agricultural industries, it processes organic by-products and turns them into natural gas and electricity.

Terrafix Geosynthetics Inc. & Queen's University

Terrafix Geosynthetics is making the world's landfills safer with its unique geosynthetic clay liner, a woven fabric like material that acts as a barrier, to keep hazardous landfill waste from leaching into the land and nearby waters.

Transform Automotive & University of Western Ontario

TransForm Automotive is an auto parts manufacturing company in Ontario not only surviving today, but growing and capturing new market share, manufacturing and supplying transmission splined clutch housings for automatic transmissions in over 1.8 Million cars and trucks annually.

WDI Wise Device & University of Toronto

Wise Device Inc. (WDI) has developed new, innovative and disruptive technologies incorporating laser and optics that revolutionizes the manufacturing process for LCD displays.

Past Recipients

	2008 - RapidMind Inc.and University of Waterloo Watch Video
	2007 - BTI Photonic Systems Inc. and Queen's University / SRI Petro Chemical Inc. and University of Guelph Watch Video
	2006 - Millenium Biologix Corporation and Queen's University Watch Video