Thursday, May 13, 2021

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• BlackBerry and Waterloo create joint innovation partnership
• Canadian Cancer Society honours Geoffrey Fong's research leadership
• Staff member earns Canadian award for technology transfer leadership
• MFA thesis exhibition and other notes

BlackBerry and Waterloo create joint innovation partnership

This article was originally featured on Waterloo News.

BlackBerry Limited (NYSE: BB; TSX: BB) and the University of Waterloo have announced a five-year, multi-million dollar partnership agreement focused on driving research-powered innovation in Canada.

Combining the University’s world-renowned research and BlackBerry’s ability to deliver transformational products and services, the two organizations will work together in a unique program designed to fast-track the development of research and technology into market-ready products.

BlackBerry’s Advanced Technology Development Labs group, which is a team of over 120 software developers, architects, researchers, and security experts, will work with the University toward the common goal of identifying, exploring, and creating groundbreaking technologies.

The primary focus will be to develop and conduct research projects—beginning with the University’s Faculties of Mathematics, Engineering, and Science, in conjunction with the Waterloo Artificial Intelligence Institute and the Waterloo Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute—to refine BlackBerry’s product ideas through prototyping and R&D challenges. This will include the development of new business partnerships with faculty members and students who have commercial aspirations for their invented intellectual property.

“At BlackBerry, we are constantly searching for ways we can advance the development of innovative technologies to secure and protect our increasingly hyperconnected world,” said John Chen, Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry. “We are thrilled to be doubling down on that mission while helping to foster the next generation of innovators and imagineers as part of our expanded partnership with the University of Waterloo and look forward to working with them to investigate new ideas with a view to taking them from hand-scribbled diagrams to fully formed technologies ready for the global marketplace.”

Focus areas for the research activities include cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and safety assurance to align with BlackBerry’s core business areas such as BlackBerry IVY™, the company’s recently announced Intelligent Vehicle Data Platform.

Building on a partnership spanning over three decades, this agreement represents the most comprehensive and concerted effort yet to combine the unique strengths of BlackBerry and the University to turbocharge the company’s technological innovation.

“We are delighted to work with BlackBerry in the coming years to tackle disruptive, global challenges,” said Feridun Hamdullahpur, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Waterloo. “This agreement is an important milestone in our long-standing partnership, and further cements the University’s unique position at the heart of a critical innovation community—where talent, world-class research and entrepreneurial spirit come together to connect ideas and impact.”

As part of the agreement, BlackBerry will become one of three founding partners of the Gateway for Enterprises to Discover Innovation (GEDI), an office at the University that streamlines corporate engagement. GEDI helps companies establish unique partnerships with the University of Waterloo spanning research, talent, training, and Waterloo’s robust entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Additional collaboration highlights

• An annual $10,000 BlackBerry Cybersecurity and Privacy Excellence Scholarship, awarded as part of BlackBerry’s membership with the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute
• Collaboration with various schools and groups within the University of Waterloo, including Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business, Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business, Problem Lab, and other student innovation programs
• Cross-campus co-curricular learning opportunities like hackathons.

To learn more about how to partner with the University of Waterloo, visit GEDI.

Canadian Cancer Society honours Geoffrey Fong's research leadership

This article was originally featured on the Faculty of Arts news site.

The Canadian Cancer Society has just announced that Professor Geoffrey Fong is the 2021 recipient of the O. Harold Warwick Prize for outstanding research achievements in cancer control in Canada. The prize recognizes Fong’s leadership of the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (ITC Project).

“Smoking tobacco is a leading cause of cancer not just in Canada, but globally,” says Dr. Stuart Edmonds, Executive Vice-President, Mission, Research and Advocacy at CCS. “We commend Dr Fong on his research and advocacy efforts, which have helped reduce tobacco use and had an unparalleled impact on the health of millions of people around the world.”

Fong is founder and chief principal investigator of the ITC Project, based in the Department of Psychology. Fong’s ITC Project has conducted surveys in 29 countries to evaluate key policies of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). From the more than 300,000 completed surveys that have been conducted since 2002, the ITC team has published over 600 scientific papers, many of which have evaluated the effectiveness of FCTC policies, including smoke-free laws, graphic warnings, and higher tobacco taxes.

Just last week Fong and professors Mary Thompson (Faculty of Math) and David Hammond (Faculty of Health) were jointly awarded a 2021 Governor General’s Innovation Award for their ITC Project impacts on quality of life in Canada.

Recent ITC evaluation studies in Canada include plain packaging and ban of menthol cigarettes, which found that Canada’s menthol ban led to substantially greater quitting among menthol smokers and lower relapse among former menthol smokers.

In fact, on April 29, the US FDA announced that the US would also ban menthol cigarettes, highlighting the ITC study and Fong’s estimates based on the Canadian findings that the US menthol cigarette ban would lead an additional 923,000 US smokers to quit.

Fong acknowledges Waterloo’s Office of Research whose “truly amazing support in our project’s obtaining nearly 100 research grants over the years. Their support—and that of the faculties of Arts, Math, and Health, and so many others at Waterloo—has made it possible for our ITC Project to advance the science of population health at the global level.”

The O. Harold Warwick Prize is named after the pioneering researcher in cancer control and treatment, who became the first executive director of both the former National Cancer Institute of Canada and the Canadian Cancer Society. The award is given annually to honour distinguished investigators in cancer control research.

Staff member earns Canadian award for technology transfer leadership

The Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) has recognized a University of Waterloo staff member with an award for leadership in the professional community.

Mike Szarka, Director of Research Partnerships in the Office of Research, received the Canadian award at the virtual AUTM Canadian Region meeting on Wednesday. The annual award recognizes a Canadian member who has served the greater technology transfer community in Canada and contributed to technology transfer in a meaningful way.

“Mike checked all the boxes. He’s a model contributor and is always there to provide wise advice,” said Darren Fast, Chair of the AUTM Canadian Committee and Director of Partnerships and Innovation at the University of Manitoba. “He represents something we all aspire to.”

Mike’s leadership and support for fellow technology transfer managers includes organizing events for Canadian members, advocating for a larger Canadian AUTM presence to address specific Canadian issues, and working to develop peer networks through his previous role as Chair of the Canadian committee of AUTM. On a more informal level Mike is an active contributor to a Canadian technology transfer chat board and regularly shares his knowledge and expertise with other tech transfer professionals.

Mike joined Waterloo in 2015 with nearly 20 years of experience in academic research partnerships and technology transfer at Queen’s University, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, University of Toronto, and Ontario Centres of Excellence. He holds a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Waterloo and a PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Toronto.

MFA thesis exhibition and other notes

The Department of Fine Arts and the University of Waterloo Art Gallery (UWAG) is presenting the MFA thesis work of artist Jordan Blackburn from May 13 to 29.

"In Places Rarely Scene is an interdisciplinary exhibition bringing together print installation, video, photography, sound and text," says the artist. "The exhibition considers my own shifting perception of what Nature is and how I relate to it as a man from a Québécois background. This shift is informed by my lived experience and practice based research which led me to questions of what it means to create ecologically focussed art, temporal investigations, inquiries into Indigenous ways of knowing Nature and land, as well as the similarities and differences between art and science."

Jordan Blackburn is a Franco-Albertan artist working in Trois-Rivières, QC, while pursuing an MFA degree at Waterloo. Since completing a BFA in Interdisciplinary Fine Art at NSCAD University he has shown work both nationally and internationally, and has received a number of awards for his research around complex relationships between human beings and Nature, such as the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship.

The exhibition is split between videos and text at the University of Waterloo Art Gallery, and site-specific works in Trois-Rivières, Quebec. Updated exhibition documentation will be posted online May 17.

While we are on the subject of things artistic, Waterloo alumnus, blogger, and casual Theatre Centre employee James Nicoll is up for an Aurora Award for his Young People Read Old SFF project in the Best Fan Writing and Publication category.The Auroras are Canada's annual Science Fiction and Fantasy awards.

St. Jerome's University's Lectures in Catholic Experience series continues tomorrow with "The Black Church in Canada", the third installment in the online "Hope in the Time of COVID" series.

"For years, scholars talked about the Black Church in North America as if it were a monolith, ignoring the unique circumstances of Black Christians in Canada," says the lecture's promotional material. "This lecture will present an overview of the origins of the Black Church in Canada debunking cultural stereotypes and taken for granted assumptions of its solely US-based origins. It will also discuss issues confronting the Black Church in the 21st century."

Speaking will be Dr. Carol Duncan from Wilfrid Laurier University, where she is a Professor in Religion and Culture. Duncan is the author of This Spot of Ground: Spiritual Baptists in Toronto(2008), co-author of Black Church Studies: An Introduction (2007) and contributing editor to The Encyclopedia of Caribbean Religions (2013). She is also co-editor of The Black Church Studies Reader (2016). Her latest book project is Black Religion and Popular Culture. She is also the recipient of numerous teaching awards, including the prestigious 3M National Teaching Fellowship. 

The event takes place on May 14 at 7:30 p.m. on Microsoft Teams. No registration is required.