Please join the Department of Chemical Engineering to hear Professor Elicia Maine discuss ways to accelerate the commercialization of innovative advanced materials.
All graduate Chemical Engineering students will receive an Outlook calendar event with webinar access details.
Everyone is welcome – If you are not a graduate Chemical Engineering student, contact the Manager of Graduate Studies for the access information you need to join the webinar.
Abstract
As more multinational chemical and materials firms move to open innovation models, advanced materials ventures, often spun out of universities, are of increasing importance to creating and commercializing new materials and processes. These ventures are typically focused on breakthrough technologies that provide a window on innovation for the large multinational firms. Yet, such ventures face daunting challenges in their route from lab to market.
Advanced materials innovations, underlying new product development across many industries (such as energy generation, energy storage, water treatment, transportation, and biomedical devices) typically take 5-15 years from invention to commercial product. Although advanced materials innovation enables broad value creation across many sectors of the economy, these long commercialization timelines, coupled with high capital investment and sustained uncertainty, deter investment.
Drawing on observation and analysis of over 100 advanced materials ventures, Professor Maine will propose strategies and policies that can reduce technical and market risks and accelerate advanced materials commercialization. This presentation draws on a paper published in Nature Materials titled "Accelerating Advanced Materials Commercialization," which can be accessed here https://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v15/n5/full/nmat4625.html
Biographical Sketch
Elicia Maine is the W.J. VanDusen Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Simon Fraser University’s (SFU) Beedie School of Business. She is also the Founder and Academic Director for the award winning Invention to Innovation (i2I) program, which develops entrepreneurial mindset in PhD scientists and engineers, while advancing commercialization strategy for university inventions.
Professor Maine has deep interdisciplinary roots, with degrees in Materials Engineering, English, Technology & Policy and Technology Management from Queen’s, M.I.T. and the University of Cambridge. Her research, published in Nature Materials, Nature Nanotechnology, Research Policy, Technovation and Journal of Cleaner Production, focuses on enabling science innovation in the advanced materials, nanotechnology, biotechnology and clean tech sectors.
She is a frequent and dynamic keynote speaker and panelist, serves on the Boards of Directors of the Foresight Clean Tech Accelerator, Innovate BC, and the Composites Knowledge Network, on the awards committees of several translational grant programs, and as an active mentor to scientist-entrepreneurs. As Special Advisor on Innovation to SFU’s VP Research and International (VPRI), Professor Maine provides leadership, integration and alignment for innovation initiatives across the university, through SFU Innovates. She was honoured as Top Educator in the 2021 BC Cleantech Awards.
