On April 14 and 15, the University of Waterloo will be at the centre of a global innovation conversation during the Waterloo Innovation Summit held on campus.

Participate in the summit online

Watch the summit online and join the conversation April 14 at 1:00 p.m. and April 15, at 9:00 a.m..

Follow the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #WINS14 and send your questions to @uwaterloo. We'll also be holding exclusive Twitter chats with experts Monday at 12:00 p.m. and Tuesday at 12:20 p.m. and 3:15 p.m.

Presentations and keynotes

In addition to discussions on global innovation, the conference will feature talks about new trends in manufacturing and venture capital.

Some of this year's highlights include:

Eric Migicovsky

Eric Migicovsky, Waterloo alumni and founder and CEO of Pebble Technology, the company behind the Pebble watch, a smartwatch for iPhone and Android.

 

Susan Fonseca

Susan Fonseca, Founder and CEO of Women@TheFrontier (W@F). Her focus is to Find – Fuel – Fund female innovators and Game-Changers that shift mindset, empower entire communities, and inspire a new generation of leaders. Susan is also a Founding Member of Singularity University (SU).

 

Torsten Kolind

Torsten Kolind, Co-founder and CEO of YouNoodle, the San Francisco-based startup which focuses on helping companies and governments engage with communities of entrepreneurs and innovators.

 

Helge Seetzen

Helge Seetzen, CEO of TandemLaunch Technologies, who provides university inventors with the funding, staff resources, infrastructure and industry connections necessary to bring their ideas to market.

 

Whitney Rockley

Whitney Rockley, Co-founder of McRock Capital, a venture capital firm focused exclusively on the Industrial Internet. She is passionate about women-in-tech and inspiring girls to get into STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) through her website whitvc.com.

 

Meet this year's presenters and panelists and see what's happening on the summit agenda.

About the summit

The Waterloo Innovation Summit fosters global innovation conversations by bringing together innovators, global thought leaders, policy makers and academics who have the power to influence change and drive prosperity. The summit aims to facilitate the expansion a global culture of innovation through the sharing of information.

Last year, the inaugural conference introduced the world to the Quantum Valley Investment Fund, a venture capitalist fund providing financial and intellectual capital for the development and commercialization of quantum physics and computing.

This year, the Waterloo Innovation Summit will explore next generation technologies on the threshold of major investment, corporate venture capital, and how to build national technology brands with Waterloo at the centre of a global innovation hub.

Learn more about this year’s themes on our blog.