Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology – Soochow University – Suzhou Industrial Park Joint Workshop

Good morning everyone.

It is an honour to visit the People’s Republic of China and Soochow University.

Thank you all for welcoming me so warmly, and for the invitation.

This is my second trip to China in three months.

In November, I travelled to Hong Kong to formally open a University of Waterloo satellite office for our very active Hong Kong Alumni Association, as we continue to build meaningful relationships with our alumni family here in China.

The University of Waterloo is proud of its tradition of engagement with China – as of the fall of 2010, we had almost 2,900 students from China studying on our main campus, a number that makes up fully 41 per cent of our international student complement.

We have a vibrant relationship with our alumni going back more than 30 years, with more than 1,700 alumni living in China as of 2011.

We have strong connections with institutions in China, including a Sino-Canadian College at Nanjing University and numerous exchange programs with top universities like Tsinghua.

We are steadfast in our conviction that the University of Waterloo has much to offer this region of the world, even as we learn from you.

The University of Waterloo has more than 320 academic, research, and development agreements that link us with institutions in 60 countries. But 50 of those agreements are right here in China.

The University of Waterloo’s research strengths have resonance in both Canada and China as we are looking into the most significant issues facing the world and coming up with solutions in collaboration with our partners right here in China:

From aging and senior wellness research that will help us deal with the coming demographic shifts and their pressure on our healthcare infrastructure and economy, to smoking cessation research in 23 countries, including China, that is having a significant impact on public policies to reduce smoking and prevent disease.

To water research that helps communities deal with the pressures of urbanization and development in environmentally sustainable ways, and projects that increase the detection of water-borne microorganisms.

To research and academic programs in quantitative finance, insurance, and risk management that can help our countries weather the economic downturn.

And of course, leading-edge nanotechnology research.

We look forward to developing these research areas through local partnerships in the years to come.

I say all this as a preamble to my remarks this morning, as I spend the next few minutes discussing the University of Waterloo, and developments that we have undertaken that are shaping the next generation of leaders in science, technology, and business who are creating innovations that are quite simply changing our world.

I would like to welcome you to Canada’s Innovation University.

In 1957, our university was founded to meet a national need – Canada was facing a shortage of science and engineering graduates as the pace of technological change increased at the dawn of the Space Age.

How did our founders approach this task? The way in which they did it was absolutely crucial:

They took a method of education – co-operative education – that was largely untested in Canada, and made it their cornerstone.

We engaged with industry leaders both at home and across Canada and convinced them to take a chance on this new model of experiential learning that would make the barrier between industry and academia a permeable one.

Students would take what they had learned in class, rotate out into the business world, apply their knowledge, learn new ways of doing things, and turn around and take those experiences with them back to campus.

In Canada at the time, this was a revolutionary idea, and Waterloo is now recognized as a Canadian pioneer and world leader in co-operative education and experiential learning.

As our faculty members and researchers began to make discoveries that could find a market, we considered our Intellectual Property Policy.

Rather than have them sneak their ideas out the side door, we threw open those doors, and told them to take their ideas and run with them.

That’s our “Inventor Owned” IP Policy. No bottleneck, no strings attached, no problem. Our researchers own their discoveries.Without the university’s IP policy, our entrepreneurial faculty members would not have been able to create DALSA, Waterloo Maple, and Open Text, all of which are Canadian tech success stories.

Without the university’s IP policy, student entrepreneurs would not be able to pick up on the atmosphere, and our Commercialization Office would not be able to work with professors in formal institutional support situations.

This IP Policy is an incentive that attracts high-quality entrepreneurial research talent to our university.

Ownership of IP is the best motivator to facilitate the transfer of university-developed knowledge and technology to societal use and benefit.

Venture capitalists prefer patents and IP ownership as opposed to licensing agreements when decide what project to back, so there are no claims of surprise ownership, or a percentage owed back to the university.

Now, there are 35-40 inventor – owned IP regimes at Canadian universities, but the University of Waterloo’s is distinctive because there are absolutely no strings attached – there are no requirements of a 25 per –cent stake in the initiative.

To fully support this university and community’s entrepreneurial culture, we established the Waterloo Commercialization Office, or WatCo, several years ago to assist students and faculty who wanted to take their ideas from the laboratory and the lecture hall, to the marketplace.

And in time we decided to further support the entrepreneurial efforts of our students through innovative programs like the Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology, or MBET.

The MBET is housed in the Conrad Centre for Business Entrepreneurship and Technology, which provides unprecedented opportunities for our faculty and students to incubate their ideas and to network with industry.

This degree program provides the business skills critical to identifying and exploiting commercial opportunities and connects students to Waterloo’s thriving business and high-tech community.

We also established an Accelerator Centre, recognized as one of the best of its kind in the world, in our David Johnston Research and Technology Park.

This centre provides facilities, expertise, and mentorship programs for startups and University of Waterloo spinoffs and currently serves 49 companies – 22 in the main facility in the David Johnston Research + Technology Park and 27 in the Communitech Hub at the new Tannery building in downtown Kitchener.

And we opened VeloCity, a “dormcubator” for 70 of our leading students with software, digital arts, systems, computer science, business, and entrepreneurial backgrounds to live and work together, imagining and creating the future of mobile communications, web, and new media.

In 2010, VeloCity engaged 181 student entrepreneurs, and 23 new start-up companies were created, 33 new products and services were developed and 100 jobs were created.

VeloCity recently expanded into the Communitech Hub in Kitchener, providing the Velocity Workspace: a working environment for 12 Waterloo student and alumni early-stage startup companies.

So we have come to a point where we have research, co-operative education, commercialization and technology transfer expertise.

We are home to a vibrant innovation and commercialization ecosystem that is putting Waterloo the university, and Waterloo the community, on the map.

This ecosystem, taken as a whole and including Communitech, the community’s high tech sector advocacy group, and the Accelerator Centre in the David Johnston Research + Technology Park, is responsible for the start-up and spin-off culture we are so famous for.

And some of the most commercially interesting technologies in our Commercialization Office’s portfolio at the moment are based on inventions involving Chinese researchers.

The start-up model we used with Doctor Pu Chen of the University of Waterloo, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Nano-Biomaterials is one example.

Dr. Chen worked with nano-peptide technology – self-assembling nano peptides can deliver drugs into cells for cancer therapy and act as cell transfection reagents.

Dr. Chen accepted a research funded position at the Nanjing University of Technology for three months a year, and the Nanjing Research Park provided seed capital for a China-based startup company.

The University of Waterloo incorporated an Ontario-based startup company using an incentive and milestone model, and recruited Chinese Canadian management – Doctor Dongxu “Don” Qiu.

This led to the development of NPT Biotechnology Incorporated, with the University of Waterloo exclusively licensing NPT Canada, with NPT China receiving a sub-licence from NPT Canada for the Asian market, and working on developing technology with the Nanjing University of Technology.

NPT China would manufacture all produces and sell to NPT Canada, with the two sides sharing the profit.

NPT Biotechnology is just one example of a collaborative commercialization opportunity.

Work is being done by Doctor Zhou Wang, a renowned video compression expert, on new compression methodologies, with three patents filed, and prototyping underway.

Doctor Guang Gong, the founder and director of the Communications Security Lab, is working on lightweight security systems for 4G communications networks.

And Waterloo’s Ming Li, the 2010 Killam Prize winner, is working on mobile voice Question and Answer search engine technology that is particularly more accurate for non-native English speakers, and includes Chinese to English translations, a method that is scalable to other languages. A patent has been filed, and the first prototype is being implemented.

We are a national leader in connecting academic excellence with industry.

What is the result?

Waterloo graduates and faculty have founded some of the most successful technology enterprises in the world. Research In Motion, Dalsa, Sybase, and Open Text are just a few of the companies that have not only shaped our community, but also have helped define the communications revolution.

And now, with programs like VeloCity and support from the Accelerator Centre and Communitech Hub, we are giving our students an opportunity to follow their entrepreneurial dreams and turn their discoveries into innovations.

Vital to the growth of Waterloo’s innovation culture is Communitech, which supports technology companies in Waterloo Region and promotes the area as a technology cluster; the Accelerator Centre, which acts as a catalyst to bring high-tech start-up ideas to market; and Canada’s Technology Triangle, an organization promoting the benefits of doing business in Waterloo Region.

The world is sitting up and taking notice. The British journal ‘Regional Studies’ describes Waterloo as “one of the most dynamic sources of high-tech activity in Canada.”

So for the University of Waterloo, it’s about creating conditions. Taking the long view.

Recognizing that you have to seamlessly integrate teaching, research, commercialization, and entrepreneurialism. Linking academia to industry, government, and community.

We believe that innovation is as much a sense of place and position, as it is an activity.

Innovation is a research university’s natural response to the complex challenges of a changing world.

An innovative university is one that is making an impact outside the boundaries of its campus. It is one that is solving the problems that matter to our community and our country, and the world.

It is an institution that is living up to its promise and purpose as a powerhouse of intellectual enquiry, and a key requirement for the social, economic, and technological development of our societies.

And, it is an institution that has built the strongest pipeline from the laboratory and the lecture hall to the marketplace.

Real innovation is about finding points of chaos, of collision, of crisis, and working to solve those problems that flow from them.

It could be demographics and the health and policy issues of an aging population. It could be the limitation of Moore’s Law on technological development, or it could be securing safe, clean water and sustainable energy for future generations.

This is where the University of Waterloo wants to be.

Universities must be at the centre of a critical mass of ideas involving connections to government, industry, academia, community, non-profits, and most importantly, people.

The Waterloo community has built a critical mass over the years

A university that is modeling 21st Century Higher Education to the entire world.

Political leaders at all levels of government with the vision and drive to support an Intelligent Community.

An engaged, talented citizenry.

Innovative business success stories that have put this city on the map as a tech giant, with high tech advocacy groups working to attract more major players to this community.

And the next generation of entrepreneurial students, graduates, and faculty members who want to turn ideas into innovations.

Thank you.