Startups

Cities

Entrepreneurship Hatchery

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Sustainability

�r�� Scarborough

Subheadline

With new installations at Casa Loma and �r�� Scarborough, Lyrata is supplying freshly grown produce to local caterers and restaurants

A startup co-founded by a �r�� graduate student has its roots in an experience that is all too common for many of us.

He kept forgetting to water his plants.

“I was working in a plant immunity biology lab, so if I didn’t water them, I’d have no plants to do experiments with,” says Adnan Sharif, who is pursuing a master’s degree in the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

He says his solution was inspired by his father.

“My dad is a mechanical engineering professor at a university in Japan, and he knows a lot about manufacturing materials with porous, three-dimensional structures,” he says. “That’s how I got the idea to make my own 3D-printed soil construct, which could retain water for a week or more.

“That way, I wouldn’t have to go into the lab and water the plants so often.”

The innovation – which Sharif came up as an undergraduate working in the lab of Keiko Yoshioka, a professor in the department of cell and systems biology in �r��’s Faculty of Arts & Science – is one of several that now underpins Lyrata, a startup that grows fresh produce for caterers and high-end restaurants across the Greater Toronto Area.

The company, which got its start in a greenhouse on �r��’s St. George campus, has recently expanded with operations at �r�� Scarborough and Casa Loma, a museum, event space and historic site in midtown Toronto.

Growing plants without soil, known as hydroponics, is a technique commonly used in greenhouses worldwide. But Sharif and his team see an opportunity to make the industry more sustainable, starting with the soil replacement that the plants grow in.

“The product that almost everyone uses today is basically the same as house insulation,” Sharif says. “It’s made from rocks that are mined in remote places and shipped hundreds of kilometres to a production facility, where they are heated to thousands of degrees in a giant furnace to make a porous, chemically inert material. This material then needs to be shipped again to where it’s needed, and when you’re finished, you throw it in the garbage.”

By contrast, Lyrata’s SmartSoil is 3D-printed using biopolymers such as polylactic acid, which is derived from corn. These materials can be locally sourced and require much lower temperatures to melt and form into porous structures.

When the growing cycle is complete, the product goes through a low-heat proprietary cleaning process and can be used again. Sharif says that SmartSoil has a total lifespan of about two years, after which it can be composted along with crop residue. Together, these changes greatly lower the carbon footprint of indoor farming.

In 2020, Sharif and his co-founders brought his idea to The Entrepreneurship Hatchery, �r�� Engineering’s startup incubator and one of several entrepreneurship hubs across �r��’s three campuses. Through the Hatchery’s Nest process, they were connected with business mentors, including alumnus Xavier Tang, a consultant and venture capitalist who still advises the company today.

Over the next few years, the team evolved, with some original members leaving and others joining. They include Leo Hua, who has been pivotal to speeding the development of 3D printable soil. The concept evolved, too, as the team realized that producing food was a better business for Lyrata than rather than selling their growth medium to other farmers.

The Hatchery team – in particular, Executive Director Joseph Orozco, Go-To-Market Lead Erika J. Murray and a team of work-study students, mentors and legal externs – helped Lyrata develop their technology and business. In 2022, the Hatchery provided $155,000 in seed funding, enabling the founders to be employed by their company and further supporting business development. The funding also enabled the company to rent greenhouse space on campus, where they began growing lettuce to provide to Spaces and Experiences at �r��.

Lyrata also developed something new: a modular unit that works exclusively with their SmartSoil and contains everything required to produce a variety of indoor crops – from lights and growth medium to irrigation systems.

“None of these technological and business developments would have taken place without the generous support of the over 50 Hatchery mentors, work-study students, and legal externs who contributed to our success,” says Sharif.

“Our current concept is what we call farming-as-a-service,” Hua adds. “The SmartGrow unit we developed is small enough to fit into a standard parking spot. Our clients sign a contract with us to place a unit on their site and we take care of everything from planting to harvesting.

“For a flat fee, they get a self-contained farm that provides a reliable quantity of their desired crop over a set period of time.”

In addition to providing a locally sourced, sustainable product, Sharif says the approach can also help mitigate fluctuations in the price of wholesale produce.

“In Canada, most of our lettuce comes from California, which has been dealing with drought and many other issues,” says Sharif. “Supply chain disruptions due to COVID-19 were also a big challenge for restaurants, which have very thin margins to begin with. At one point, the price of lettuce increased by a factor of six, so you can imagine the effect that would have.”

So far, Lyrata has produced more than 15 different types of crops, including basil, parsley and mizuna, also known as Japanese mustard greens.

Support from the �r�� Engineering community has been key to Lyrata’s success.

For example, it was a �r�� Engineering alumni connection that recently led to Lyrata launching an installation at the historic Casa Loma museum and landmark in Toronto.

“Lyrata’s competitive edge is that they provide an on-site, full service and they do not take up very much space,” says Nikol Watlikiewicz, Casa Loma’s horticulture and grounds manager. “In a small corner of our potting shed, we were able to build two grow units that provide a good yield weekly, without having to train our staff on the complicated system.

“Growing indoors gives us the stability and control that traditional agriculture does not. It’s an excellent example of how engineers can help solve the global food crisis with innovative thinking.”

In August, Lyrata launched another growing unit at �r�� Scarborough, located within the Harmony Commons Dining Hall.

The priority for the next few years is growing Lyrata’s crop offerings and client base with ongoing support from The Hatchery. The incubator has facilitated graduate student placements through Mitacs, with matching funds. It also backed a recent $167,500 project with the Ontario and Canadian governments through the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership program to further advance the yield and efficiency of the SmartSoil system.

“The fact we’ve been able to come this far in such a short time is in large part due to the help we’ve had from �r�� Engineering, and especially the Entrepreneurship Hatchery,” says Sharif.

“Whether it was getting seed funding, finding mentors, hiring work-study students or making important connections through their alumni network, we wouldn’t be here without their support.”

�r�� startup Honeybee acquired by global clinical trials firm Leapcure

rahul.kalvapalle — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 14:55:48 +0000

�r�� startup Honeybee acquired by global clinical trials firm Leapcure

rahul.kalvapalle Fri, 08/16/2024 - 10:55

Cutline

(photo courtesy of Leapcure)

Topic

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Health Innovation Hub

Impact Centre

Innovation & Entrepreneurship

ONRamp

Subheadline

Co-founded by Catherine Chan and Weiwei Li, Honeybee Trials' platform helps clinical trial recruiters find, screen and manage patients for their research

Honeybee Trials, a �r�� startup that connects research teams with patients and study participants, has been acquired by global clinical trials company Leapcure in a deal that is poised to drive more inclusive and affordable trials that’s ultimately applicable to a broader population.

Co-founded by �r�� alumni Catherine Chan and Weiwei Li, Honeybee built a web and mobile platform to help clinical trial teams attract, screen, recruit and manage study participants. Since its founding in 2019, the startup has connected over 30,000 patients and participants to more than 1,000 clinical trials across North America.

Leapcure, headquartered in California, offers an array of solutions that combines people-backed services with data-driven technologies to fill clinical trials for global sponsors and CROs, but can now expand affordable patient recruitment to institutional sites, private sites and biotech firms. Moreover, their work alongside patients and advocacy groups has significantly helped to reach underrepresented communities – a focus that will receive a boost following the purchase of Honeybee.

Chan, who earned a master’s degree in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine’s department of nutritional sciences, says the deal grew out of a desire to partner strategically with a larger company that could provide access to broader sectors within the clinical research world.

Catherine Chan (L) and Weiwei Li (supplied image)

“At Honeybee, we offered competitive pricing for academic and hospital sites, local CROs [contract research organizations] and biotech firms,” Chan says. “With this partnership, we’re able to provide services across all of the different types of trial scopes and sizes.”

She adds that both Honeybee and Leapcure have placed a strong focus on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility by helping researchers attract study participants of different ethnicities, ages, genders and sexual orientations – helping make clinical trials more equitable and reflective of the wider population.

“It’s important to us that there's a mission and vision alignment between the companies... it couldn’t be a better fit,” Chan said.

The asset purchase deal for an undisclosed amount, which was announced in an Aug. 13 press release, will see Chan transition from CEO of Honeybee to senior director of product at Leapcure.

“We’re excited to join forces with Catherine and Honeybee. They’ve been really focused on the newest recruitment technologies that are most impactful for both patients and research,” said Leapcure CEO Zachary Gobst. “A big reason that things came together was our alignment on impact first. It’s a credit to how they’ve been approaching their business the right way from the beginning."

Honeybee evolved out of the frustrations that Chan faced in recruiting study participants for her master’s thesis. Motivated to explore solutions, Chan created a prototype that would help match participants with trials; she then enrolled in a one-week accelerator program in the Impact Centre (now the Centre for Entrepreneurship) in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

She soon teamed up with Li, who earned his bachelor’s and master’s of applied science degrees from the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, to co-found Honeybee. The startup later joined the Health Innovation Hub (H2i) accelerator and operated out of office space in �r�� Entrepreneurship’s ONRamp facility prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

With COVID-19 measures encouraging the adoption of digital tools by clinical research teams, Honeybee found itself well-placed to play an important role. “The pandemic provided an opportunity for many tech companies to scale as the market became more open-minded and ready to adopt technologies to help connect them day-to-day," Chan says. "We saw a rapid adoption of Honeybee’s technology during this time where people moved away from traditional recruitment and patient communications to the current age.

“Although digital adoption across other industries has grown quite rapidly, healthcare has lagged behind, rightfully so and for many reasons, but we’re glad the transformation is happening. Just five years ago, clinical trial coordinators were still using paper handouts to recruit on the street and paper calendars to schedule patients.

“The pandemic expedited researchers being able to meet people where they are.”

Chan says the acquisition by Leapcure will enable the rollout of tiered services ranging from low-cost, self-serve tiers – targeting research teams with more modest budgets – to higher levels of service that include dedicated management.

“I’m really excited about the solutions we now have to offer together as well as the next steps in how we’re going to disrupt clinical trials.”

Professor Paul Santerre, co-founder and director of H2i, hailed Chan as "a model outcome" of the accelerator's mission to empower innovators in translating their ideas into products and companies that tackle important problems.

“Catherine and her team’s achievements are transformative in terms of democratizing the recruitment of patients for clinical study cohorts," said Santerre, the Baxter Chair for Health Technology and Commercialization at the University Health Network and professor in the Faculty of Dentistry and Institute of Biomedical Engineering who is cross-appointed to the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry.

"She has much to still teach us about the power of digital tools and their ethical use to achieve impact in clinical research trials – and this acquisition will accelerate that outcome."

Startup Job Board

laurie.bulchak — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 01:47:59 +0000

Startup Job Board laurie.bulchak Thu, 07/25/2024 - 21:47

URL

https://jobs.entrepreneurs.utoronto.ca/jobs

With �r�� innovators front and centre, Collision conference wraps up five-year Toronto run

rahul.kalvapalle — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 14:52:23 +0000

With �r�� innovators front and centre, Collision conference wraps up five-year Toronto run

rahul.kalvapalle Fri, 06/21/2024 - 10:52

Cutline

�r�� alumna Nuha Siddiqui, co-founder and CEO of Erthos, on stage at the Collision tech conference (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Adina Bresge

Topic

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Faculty of Arts & Science

Computer Science

Geoffrey Hinton

Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Innovations & Partnerships Office

Research & Innovation

Budding entrepreneurs, leading scientists and future business leaders from the �r�� community played a leading role at the 2024 Collision tech conference in downtown Toronto.

Running over three days this week, the conference drew some 40,000 attendees from across the spheres of tech, business and media, including more than 1,600 startups and 700 investors.

The rapid development of artificial intelligence technologies and their impact on business and society were key themes for many of the conference’s keynotes and exhibits – so it was no surprise that �r��’s AI luminaries were front and centre.

They included �r�� alumnus Aidan Gomez, co-founder of language processing startup Cohere – which has raised hundreds of millions from investors and generated significant industry buzz.

He urged businesses to commit to adopting AI tools to support their workers.

“Making sure that you’re delivering the tools that your employees need to be competitive and effective is crucial,” Gomez said during his talk on Tuesday.

He added that augmentation of workforces with AI co-pilots and assistants is inevitable – including in industries that might not stand out as obvious adopters of the technology. He shared the example of a natural resources insurance firm that built an AI co-pilot – powered by Cohere – to help their actuaries speed up their research, craft more accurate bids and win more contracts.

“I never would have thought a natural resources insurance company would be adopting LLMs [large language models], but they are, and it’s having an impact. It’s actually helping them win more business,” Gomez said. “So I think the technology is completely horizontal.”

Gomez also cited the medical sector – particularly, drug discovery – as another area that’s poised to benefit massively from AI advances.

Aidan Gomez, a �r�� alumnus, talked about how AI will be used to augment the workforce (photo by Polina Teif)

University Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Hinton, the influential computer scientist often dubbed the “godfather of AI,” also identified medical care and productivity as two key areas that will see significant improvements thanks to AI. However, much of his discussion, titled "Can We Control AI?", focused on his previously-cited concerns about how AI development could ultimately wrest control from humans given the current race to develop the technology and the absence of sufficient safeguards.

“Even if I’m totally benevolent and I just want to achieve what you asked me to achieve, I’ll realize that if I get more control, it will be easier to do that,” Hinton said of AI agents.

“And actually, if these things are much smarter than us, they’ll realize: Just take the control away from people and it will be much more efficient … and that seems to be like a very slippery path.”

Geoffrey Hinton warned of the existential dangers posed by unchecked AI development (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Gomez, for his part, said he doesn’t believe AI poses a serious threat.

“The notion that the technology is going to start self-improving, that it’s going to start manipulating people, that it’s going to take over, seize power and displace humans: that’s a sci-fi narrative,” he said. “I am empathetic to it – we’ve been writing stories about that exact scenario for decades, since before computers, and so it’s very deeply embedded in our cultural brainstems ... I just don’t think it’s true.”

Earlier at the conference, Raquel Urtasun, founder of self-driving trucking startup Waabi, spoke about generative AI and how Waabi is applying the technology to autonomous trucks. Her keynote took place following the company’s announcement that it raised US$200 million in Series B funding to support the deployment of driverless trucks in 2025.

“Everything will be controlled by generative AI systems inside the vehicle and nothing else. This is a breakthrough for the industry, where such a thing has never happened before,” said Urtasun, a professor in the department of computer science in �r��'s Faculty of Arts & Science.

Raquel Urtasun spoke about her self-driving truck startup Waabi (photo by Polina Teif)

The conference also featured demos from other promising �r�� startups including Erthos, which has invented sustainable alternatives to plastics and is now using machine learning to accelerate biomaterials discovery.

“Our platform allows us to design effective biomaterials five times faster and with 92 per cent less cost compared to our industry,” said co-founder and CEO Nuha Siddiqui.

Collision’s final year in Toronto was expected to draw some 40,000 attendees (photo by Johnny Guatto)

During the conference, �r��’s booth near the main stage featured exhibits from campus-linked accelerators, institutional strategic initiatives, academic divisions and the Innovations and Partnerships Office. �r��’s Black Founders Network was also at Collision as one of the organizers of the Black Innovation Zone.

Collision 2024 marked the fifth and final edition of the annual conference in Toronto.

Waabi, founded by �r��'s Raquel Urtasun, raises US$200 million to launch self-driving trucks

lanthierj — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 20:26:16 +0000

Waabi, founded by �r��'s Raquel Urtasun, raises US$200 million to launch self-driving trucks

lanthierj Wed, 06/19/2024 - 16:26

Cutline

(photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Topic

Global Lens

Department of Computer Science

Faculty of Arts & Science

Waabi, a self-driving trucking startup founded by �r�� artificial intelligence (AI) expert Raquel Urtasun, has raised US$200 million in series B funding to support the deployment of fully autonomous, AI-powered trucks in 2025.

The funding round was led by previous investors Uber Technologies Inc.– where Urtasun previously worked as chief scientist of the self-driving division – and Khosla Ventures and includes an array of other high-profile strategic investors including NVIDIA Corp., Volvo Group and Porsche Automobil Holding.

The latest funding brings total investment in Waabi to more than C$380 million and will be used to expand the Toronto-headquartered company’s team in both Canada and the U.S., as well as to launch driverless commercial deliveries in Texas by next year.

(photo Nick Iwanyshyn)

Urtasun, a professor in the department of computer science at �r��’s Faculty of Arts & Science and co-founder of the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, said Waabi’s end-to-end AI system is advancing self-driving technologies to frontiers beyond the reach of other industry players thanks to its unique ability to carry out complex reasoning.

“What we have at Waabi is a technology that brings generative AI to the physical world for the first time, where the idea is that you have a single AI system that is able to reason like a human does, and is able to generalize to situations everything that might happen on the road – including things that it has never seen before,” she said.

“It does so in a way that is interpretable, so you can validate and verify the system, and provably safe, which is very important as you deploy these massive robots in the real world.”

Paired with Waabi’s advanced simulator, the AI system reduces the need for time-consuming road testing, Urtasun explained.

The announcement came hours before Urtasun took to the main stage at the Collision tech conference in Toronto to deliver a talk on generative AI. Her remarks touched on the technological underpinnings of generative AI and future applications, and outlined how Waabi is bringing generative AI to the physical world – starting with trucking.

Raquel Urtasun at the 2024 edition of Collision (photo by Polina Teif)

Urtasun is one of several experts from �r��’s technology, innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem who are speaking at Collision. Others include University Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Hinton, a world-renowned AI luminary and investor in Waabi.

“Self-driving technology is a prime example of how AI can dramatically improve our lives,” Hinton said in a news release. “Raquel and Waabi are at the forefront of innovation, developing a revolutionary approach that radically changes the way autonomous systems work and leads to safer and more efficient solutions.”

Earlier in the week, Urtasun brought one of Waabi’s trucks to the St. George campus and showcased some of its capabilities to Melanie Woodin, dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science, Tony Gaffney, president and CEO of the Vector Institute, and Michael Brudno, professor in the department of computer science and chief data scientist at the University Health Network.

From left: Melanie Woodin, Raquel Urtasun, Tony Gaffney and Michael Brudno (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Urtasun underscored the importance of the company being headquartered in Toronto. “We’re an AI company and Toronto has always been at the forefront of AI,” Urtasun said. “There’s tremendous talent here, a busy ecosystem, and for me it’s important to be in Canada, where I’m very aligned with the values of the country as well.”

Reflecting on her journey at �r��, where she started as an assistant professor in 2014, Urtasun said she initially assumed she would “just be an academic doing research for the rest of my life” – but soon realized that involvement in industry would be critical to advancing AI technologies for use in the real world.

“Three years ago, I saw a tremendous opportunity to start a new company and what you see today is the fruit of that, where we’re really close to deployment on public roads without a human [driver],” said Urtasun.

“It’s amazing – not just for Waabi, not just for Canada, but for the industry at large.”

Think big and harness community: Eva and Allen Lau share top tips for entrepreneurs

mattimar — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 19:41:30 +0000

Think big and harness community: Eva and Allen Lau share top tips for entrepreneurs mattimar Tue, 06/18/2024 - 15:41

Topic

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Entrepreneneurship

Eva and Allen Lau, business leaders and co-founders of Two Small Fish Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm, have some advice for entrepreneurs at the �r��: leverage the �r�� community.

“Notice your classmates, your professors,” Eva says in a newly released video. “One day they could be your customers, your co-founders, your business partners.”

“It’s up to you to leverage all the resources within the �r�� ecosystem so that it can drastically improve the success rate of your startup,” Allen adds.

The �r�� alumni and spouses are widely known for their roles in launching Wattpad, a digital storytelling platform co-founded by Allen in 2006, with Eva as one of its founding members, and sold in 2021 in a US$600-million deal.

Last week, the venture capitalists announced Two Small Fish Ventures had secured the final close of its third venture fund, meeting its $40-million target.

Earlier this year, the pair delivered a keynote titled “School of Fish: Lessons from Swimming Upstream” at the Desjardins Speaker Series during �r��’s Entrepreneurship Week.

In the video, the Laus share their top tips for entrepreneurs and startup founders, including the importance of picking the right key performance indicator (KPI), taking investors through your story and thinking big.

“In the pitch, what I’m looking for is, will the startup be the category winner or – even better – the category creator?” Allen says.

“What I’m looking for are people who are ambitious, who want to be the game changer,” Eva adds. “To me, that’s what innovation looks like.”

�r��’s AI thought leaders take centre stage at Collision 2024

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 14:14:37 +0000

�r��’s AI thought leaders take centre stage at Collision 2024

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 06/14/2024 - 10:14

Cutline

Left to right: Geoffrey Hinton, Aidan Gomez and Raquel Urtasun – all �r�� community members who are leaders in the AI field – are among the most anticipated speakers this year's Collision tech conference (photos by Johnny Guatto, Piaras Ó Mídheach/Collision via Sportsfile and Polina Teif)

Mariam Matti

Topic

Computer Science

Creative Destruction Lab

Geoffrey Hinton

Research & Innovation

Subheadline

“�r�� is Canada's leading engine for research-based tech and AI startups and talent - and you see that reflected in both the lineup for Collision speakers, and the entrepreneurs who attend”

Some of the most anticipated speakers at this year’s Collision tech conference are artificial intelligence luminaries from the �r�� – and they will be sharing their insights on how the revolutionary technology is poised to transform industry and society.

Known as the "godfather of AI," Geoffrey Hinton, a cognitive psychologist and �r�� University Professor Emeritus of computer science, will host a session on June 19 titled “Can We Control AI?” that explores the potential benefits and risks inherent in AI advancement.

Aidan Gomez, one of Hinton’s former interns at Google Brain, is speaking on June 18 about the real-world impact of AI. He’s CEO and co-founder at Cohere, which he and two �r�� alumni founded, and which has been dubbed one of the “buzziest AI startups around right now.”

And Raquel Urtasun, a �r�� professor of computer science and the founder and CEO of self-driving truck company Waabi, which launched with one of the largest rounds of seed funding in Canadian history, will share her insights on the trajectory of AI-driven transportation solutions during a session on June 19.

Jon French (photo by Brian de Rivera Simon)

“�r�� is Canada's leading engine for research-based tech and AI startups and talent - and you see that reflected in both the lineup for Collision speakers, and the entrepreneurs who attend,” says Jon French, director of �r�� Entrepreneurship.

He adds that the conference also gives the university an opportunity to promote “our innovative ecosystem and connect with corporate partners from around the world and investors looking to grow their pipelines, governments and academic institutions at home and aboard.”

Anticipated to draw more than 40,000 attendees, Collision runs from June 17 to 20 at the Enercare Centre in Toronto and will feature startup founders, business leaders, investors, scientists, journalists and celebrities, including tennis star Maria Sharapova.

Before the conference officially kicks off, �r�� Entrepreneurship will host two tours of the Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus in partnership with the City of Toronto and the Government of Ontario. It will also have a booth at Collision to showcase �r��’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, featuring self-driving lab and robot demos from the Acceleration Consortium and CRAFT Microfluidics – both �r�� institutional strategic initiatives – and a “Startup Spotlight.”

�r��’s Black Founders Network is part of a group of community organizers leading the Black Innovation Zone, which will have its own booth with programming for Black innovators.

French says the conference provides �r�� startups and entrepreneurs a chance to pitch their ideas and connect with global mentors, advisers, investors, partners and peers.

“For many founders, it is an eye-opening conference that gets them thinking bigger about the markets they serve and often leads to participating in programs and opportunities in geographies around the world,” he says.

Nuha Siddiqui (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Nuha Siddiqui is among the �r��-connected entrepreneurs participating in Collision this year. She is the co-founder and CEO of Erthos, which has developed a plant-based resin that can be used as a substitute for traditional plastics when manufacturing everyday products. She launched the company with Kritika Tyagi while they were studying at the university and received support from �r��’s entrepreneurship community, including the Creative Destruction Lab at the Rotman School of Management.

Siddiqui said she’s “incredibly thankful” for �r��’s continued support to Erthos’s growth.

“My co-founder and I started Erthos years ago while we were still students, and since graduating, �r�� has continued to broaden our network, contribute to meaningful media coverage and remain active champions of our success,” she says.

“It's an absolute honour to represent the entrepreneurship community on the main stage at Collision this year and to have the opportunity to amplify our mission towards building a more material-conscious future."

Here are just a few other �r�� faculty, alumni and other community members who will be shaping the dialogue around innovation, tech and entrepreneurship at this year’s conference:

Christian Weedbrook, founder and CEO at Xanadu and a former �r�� post-doctoral researcher, will discuss the future of data centres and how quantum computing can be leveraged to avoid future economic and climate issues.
Mike Murchison, �r�� alum and founding CEO of Ada, which received support from the Creative Destruction Lab, will discuss the evolution of AI customer service agents and their implications for brands and consumers.
Curtis VanWalleghem, co-founder and CEO at Hydrostor and a �r�� alumnus, will speak about Hydrostor’s innovative technology that utilizes underground spaces for a sustainable long-term energy storage.
David Wong, chief product officer at Thomson Reuters and �r�� alumnus, will explore the transformative power of AI and offer insights on how organizations can unlock its full potential for business operations.
Mara Reiff, �r�� alumna, chief customer officer and interim co-CEO at Freshbooks, and Dan Richards, assistant professor, teaching stream, at the Rotman School of Management, will discuss how to empower small business owners to make smart decisions.

Motoring into the digital age: Driving school startup seeks to capitalize on industry's 'sketchy' reputation

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 09 May 2024 18:37:41 +0000

Motoring into the digital age: Driving school startup seeks to capitalize on industry's 'sketchy' reputation

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 05/09/2024 - 14:37

Cutline

(supplied image)

Topic

Subheadline

Kruzee allows students to do almost everything online - from browsing instructors' profiles to scheduling their appointments - while taking steps to safeguard against fraud

When an undercover CBC journalist recently called several Ontario driving schools, more than two thirds of instructors who were contacted offered to forge paperwork that would say a driver’s education program had been completed – not a single lesson required.

Mikael Castaldo, an alumnus of the �r�� Scarborough, says he’s using a high-tech approach to build a driving school where that kind of fraud isn’t allowed to happen.

“That kind of behavior is part of why we're trying to stand out in the industry,” says Castaldo, co-founder of Kruzee. “Everyone has to go through driving school. It shouldn't be this painful or scary or sketchy.”

Driving schools are appealing to new drivers because they issue beginner driver education certificates, which make new drivers eligible for insurance discounts and lets them take their road tests sooner. To receive one, students must complete 10 hours of in-car driving lessons, 10 hours of homework and 20 hours of classroom learning in-person or virtually.

Many Ontario driving schools are small businesses using little technology, Castaldo says, and tracking everything on pen and paper means information can fall through the cracks.

Kruzee, by contrast, is instead digitizing the experience: all learning except in-car lessons is done online, meaning a student’s progress is tracked automatically and there’s no faking whether they’ve finished the classwork or homework.

Kruzee co-founders Mikael Castaldo (left) and Osama Siddique (right) both have backgrounds in management (supplied image)

Castaldo and co-founder Osama Siddique, who earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from �r�� Scarborough in 2017, have brought similar accountability to in-car lessons, which has also helped them combat a frustration they’ve seen often in their research and experienced themselves.

They found that 80 per cent of Yelp reviews for prominent Ontario driving schools were negative and largely hinged on the process of booking in-car lessons. In many reviews, students recount scheduling lessons by texting or calling an instructor and then hoping both parties remembered when and where the lesson would take place – not to mention how many hours of instruction had been completed.

“We were surprised that it was impossible to book lessons online, impossible to know anything about your instructor before you get in the car with them and that the theoretical part was still pretty analog,” Castaldo says. “People complain about booking delays, last-minute cancellations, instructors ghosting them.”

Modernizing driver's ed

Kruzee, by contrast, allows students to use a website to browse profiles and reviews of driving instructors and provides information about which car they will be driving. They can schedule their appointments and get a text to remind them 24 hours before their lesson takes place. Instructors also record students’ progress and bookings through a dedicated app.

In the coming months, the company is launching a feature that will have instructors track both the hours a student has completed and their specific strengths and areas for improvement, including parallel parking or lane changes. The data will be used to create a custom report card, which instructors can use to further customize lessons.

Kruzee has also created a rigorous process to screen instructors, including extensive background checks and three rounds of interviews. It also conducts regular checks of the operation.

The digital-first approach has helped keep costs low and the company has partnered with two Canadian startups to offer further discounts. For example, Kruzee students get $500 off their first used car bought through Clutch, which lets customers buy a car online, have it delivered to their house, drive it for 10 days and, if it’s not the right fit, return it free of charge. Students can also compare insurance rates with five free quotes from Walnut Insurance.

In addition, Kruzee has a course to prepare students for the first written test needed to get a driver’s licence, the G1, and students who take it are given a full refund if they don’t pass on their first try.

So far, the startup has expanded across Ontario and into British Columbia – and has sights set on entering the huge U.S. market.

“We've been getting a pretty phenomenal response so far in Vancouver, because people are facing the same problems there, and we know it's a similar experience throughout the U.S.,” Castaldo says. “We’ve created a model that gives driving instructors and students what they're looking for – but better.”

What Now? AI, Episode 4: AI and Creativity

mattimar — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 21:22:39 +0000

What Now? AI, Episode 4: AI and Creativity mattimar Thu, 04/25/2024 - 17:22

Topic

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

What Now? AI

Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

Faculty of Arts & Science

Computer Science

Faculty of Information

�r�� Mississauga

Vector Institute

The creative industry is poised to be forever changed by artificial intelligence.

Writing tools like ChatGPT and image generators like Midjourney and DALL-E have exploded into the mainstream. Adobe built its own version of generative AI technology for its creative suites and OpenAI announced its text-to-video model, Sora.

What impact will these tools and models have on the creative process? How will they change the role of an artist?

In the fourth episode of What Now? AI, hosts Beth Coleman and Rahul Krishnan dive into these questions with AI researchers Sanja Fidler of the �r�� and Nick Frosst, who co-founded the startup Cohere.

Listen to episode four on  Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, iHeartRadio and Amazon. Watch episode four on YouTube. 

Fidler, the vice president of AI research at NVIDIA and an associate professor of mathematical and computational sciences at �r�� Mississauga, says that while AI technology is still in its early stage, it has the potential to provide artists with more adaptability and creative control.

“When artists see these methods like text-to-x, text-to-image or text-to-video, I feel that they have pushback because now there is only text that allows you to control the content,” says Fidler, an affiliate faculty member at the Vector Institute, which she co-founded.

“I think artists do want to have this iterative creative control. They have some idea in their head, and they have all these tools that allowed them to go from that idea into the final product. We want to do the same thing with AI as well.”

Frosst, who sings in the band Good Kid, says he doesn’t use large language models to help him write songs – only to help analyze lyrics and themes.

“I’m not really looking to optimize my artistic expression,” says Frosst, who completed his undergraduate degree in computer science and cognitive science at �r��.

“I don’t really want to write a new Good Kid song and be less involved. I want to be more involved.”

Frosst believes AI will change the way art is created, but not to the point where people aren’t interested in the artists who are making it.

“We want to know who made it, and that’s mostly what’s enjoyable about it.”

About the hosts:

Beth Coleman is an associate professor at �r�� Mississauga’s Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology and the Faculty of Information. She is also a research lead on AI policy and praxis at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Coleman authored Reality Was Whatever Happened: Octavia Butler AI and Other Possible Worlds using art and generative AI.

Rahul Krishnan is an assistant professor in �r��’s department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science and department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine. He is a Canada CIFAR Chair at the Vector Institute, a faculty affiliate at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society and a faculty member at the Temerty Centre for AI Research and Education in Medicine (T-CAIREM).

�r��, hospitals launch pilot program to boost commercialization of medical innovations

rahul.kalvapalle — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 14:19:19 +0000

�r��, hospitals launch pilot program to boost commercialization of medical innovations

rahul.kalvapalle Wed, 04/24/2024 - 10:19

Cutline

(photo by Daria Perevezentsev)

Topic

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Acceleration Consortium

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

Department of Computer Science

Department of Chemistry

Hospital for Sick Children

Faculty of Art & Science

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Research & Innovation