HOME | THE NCE PROGRAM | The Young Innovators

Building a better future depends on giving our next generation of leaders the training, support and encouragement needed to do great things.

In 2004, to mark its 15th anniversary, the NCE program established the Young Innovator Awards to honour outstanding individuals who have shown exceptional leadership in not only undertaking brilliant research, but applying it to solve problems and pay social and economic dividends. The three 2005 winners embody exactly that spirit and achieved exactly those goals.

Dr. Sasha Bernatsky

Dr. Sasha Bernatsky not only led the co-ordination of the largest-ever investigation of the link between cancer and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), an autoimmune disease that primarily affects women of childbearing age, she fostered the sharing of that knowledge to those at risk.

Dr. Bernatsky, a medical doctor and Assistant Professor at McGill University, co-ordinated a collaborative effort involving almost 10,000 patients in 23 countries. The study showed that people with SLE are 15% more likely to develop cancer.

In addition to publishing the findings in peer-reviewed journals, Dr. Bernatsky made presentations at several scientific conferences and spoke to patient groups across the continent. She worked closely with Lupus Canada to disseminate the knowledge in patient-friendly formats, such as newsletters, bulletins and media interviews.

"As a direct result of Dr. Bernatsky's work, both physicians and patients have been alerted to the importance of the routine use of standard cancer screening programs for patients with SLE," said Dr. Jane Aubin, CEO of the Canadian Arthritis Network, the responsible for some of Dr. Bernatsky's training. "This is one of the best means of decreasing cancer-related morbidity and mortality in this population."

Dr. Charles Dugas

Mix an entrepreneur's passionate sense of purpose with the investigative instincts of a scientist and you get Dr. Charles Dugas, the Young Innovator Award winner from Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems (MITACS) who is helping Canada's insurance companies do business better.

In 2001 and still in his 30s, Dr. Dugas teamed up with his Ph.D. supervisor and two fellow doctoral students to create ApSTAT Technologies Inc. to commercialize research developed in their MITACS project. They were trying to improve neural networks – systems of programs and data structures that mimic brain function – to sharpen the predictive tools used by the insurance sector.

The start-up company succeeded by building a client base of insurance firms. "The technology's ability to perform better risk estimation could result in considerable cost savings," said Alain Lessard, Senior Vice-President of AXA Canada Inc., a $1.3-billion insurance and financial services company.

Dr. Dugas, who remains active with ApSTAT as Vice-President of Insurance Solutions, is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics at the
Université de Montréal.

Dr. Philippe Simard

Dr. Philippe Simard has a deep appreciation for the training he received at the GEOIDE Network – guidance that helped him to create his Montreal-based SimActive Inc. company and turn it into an up-and-coming player in the production of real-time, three-dimensional computer models.

"The support we received from GEOIDE allowed us to perform market studies, prepare our business plan and secure our intellectual property," said Dr. Simard, Young Innovator Award winner.

SimActive's solutions are geared primarily for use by the defence sector – so it is not surprising that the company has worked with Department of National Defence and CAE Inc., a global heavyweight in aircraft flight simulators. But its work with Ottawa-based Neptec Design Group in designing 3D modeling software for the camera system on the space shuttle Discovery is indicative of the potentially widespread applications. Because it makes updating map materials easier and faster, the technology also could be used for precise flood risk analysis, urban planning and disaster assessment.

"The career of Philippe Simard demonstrates a spectacular success in the Canadian contribution to the worldwide marketplace in the treatment of imagery and spatial information," said Dr. Nicholas Chrisman, GEOIDE's Scientific Director. "He is an innovator and a great demonstration of the potential for the NCE approach that links researchers, industry and user communities."

The Criteria:

The Young Innovator Award recipients are selected by a panel of judges on the basis of the excellence and leadership of the nominee; the excellence of the nomination, including research carried out and quality of results being transferred; the socio-economic impact of the transfer of knowledge; and challenges encountered in transferring that knowledge. The panel of judges included:

• Réjean Landry (Chair) – Université Laval
• Beverly Sheridan – Technology Now
• Michael Owen – Brock University
• René Douville – Life Science Ventures
• Aubrey Tingle – Michael Smith Foundation