Monday, May 27, 2013

Discovery Ontario Centres of Excellence

#ocediscovery 2013 brings together brilliant minds during Canada's largest innovation showcase at the Metro #Toronto Convention Centre. The May 27-28 event continues their tradition as Canada's Best Trade Show (2010 and 2011) by combining industry, academia, investment and government to facilitate research, showcase new developments and technologies which will lead to more innovation and, in many cases, into full scale product manufacturing.
PaperTab

OCE Discovery has over 400 exhibitors within the South Building of the convention centre. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne opened the showcase during a tour of the 200,000 square foot show floor (photo at top). The provincial leader was focusing on the over 20 Northern Development companies attending, but was sorry she missed seeing the smile initiative and loved the chocolate 3D printer.
3D Chocolateering from the University of Waterloo

The trade show floor was divided into several unique areas of expertise: the Health Zone, Digital Zone, Manufacturing Zone, Clean Tech Zone, Academic Zone, Young Entrepreneurs Zone, Regional Partners and Government & Professional Services. Some of the highly anticipated displays included the chocolate 3D printer, PaperTab - the flexible paper-thin tablet computer and the MUSE brain sensing headband.
Dr. Tom Corr and Premier Wynne
Dr. Michael Nobrega
The Honourable Kathleen Wynne, Premier of Ontario speaks at the conference

Dr. Tom Corr, President and CEO of OCE, Michael Nobrega, Chair of the OCE Board and President & CEO of OMERS and Premier Kathleen Wynne made introductory speeches on the Monday, May 27th opening, followed by keynote speaker Dr. Peter Diamandis. Peter is the chair of the X Prize who spoke of disruptive innovation and of our ability to influence a billion people as the world becomes more global while technology explodes exponentially.
Keynote speaker Dr. Peter Diamandis
"Dr. Peter Diamandis is the chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, which leads the world in designing and launching large incentive prizes to drive radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. Diamandis is also an international leader in the commercial space arena, having co-founded and run many leading entrepreneurial companies, including Zero Gravity Corporation, the Rocket Racing League, and Space Adventures. As co-founder and chairman of Singularity University—a Silicon Valley-based institution partnered with NASA, Google, Autodesk, and Nokia—Diamandis counsels the world’s top enterprises on how to utilize exponential technologies and incentivized innovation to dramatically accelerate their business objectives."
MUSE
The non-profit Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) was created in 1987 and funded by the Province of Ontario to connect research and industry to fully utilize new data and developments, driving Ontario into a better position to compete globally with a highly skilled, knowledge based economy. Originally seven independent centres of excellence were merged into the OCE in 2004. They seek to know what is needed and what is new! These questions and the connections were designed to forge partnerships and improve communications between research and industry to allow for leading-edge products that have the greatest economic and positive social impacts in Ontario. High school and post-secondary students are also embraced as the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs.

A number of theatres were spread throughout the convention centre to allow for interactive panels, round-tables and programming during the annual conference and trade show. The showcase had a number of interesting features including the 'Brain Zone', 'Ask an Expert', 'Book a Meeting', 'Make your Pitch' contest for students and the career zone and mobile innovations. The Ontario Brain Institute (OBI) announced recipients of OCE-OBI entrepreneurship fellowships which help to support the discoveries of methods and technologies that diagnose, treat or cure brain disorders.

See more OCE photos after the jump.

Sheridan College
The Idea Zone


The head table
Part of the large crowd gathered for the introductory and keynote presentations

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