Shift by Alberta Innovates

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In this episode we talk with Fred Pels from Gaia Grow Corp, Usukuma Ekuere from Canna Stream Solutions, and Andre Sinclair from TruExtracts about their partnership around an innovation destined to shake up the hemp and cannabis industry.

Bios

Fred Pels, co-founder, president & director of Gaia
Fred previously oversaw the establishment and expansion of the Green Room as a leader in medical cannabis supply, industry best practices and education about the cannabis industry itself.

Usukuma Ekuere, co-founder of Canna Stream Solutions
Dr. Ekuere has a PhD in Plant Genetics and an MBA focused on Tech Commercialization.

Andre Sinclair, facilities operations manager at TruExtracts
Andre manages the set up, licensing and operations of their Calgary and Regina extraction and processing facilities for Hemp/CBD and Cannabis/THC products and derivatives.

Company backgrounders

Gaia Grow Corp
Gaia’s main business focus is farming Industrial Hemp for Medical Purposes on its owned land in Lamont County, AB  and elsewhere.

Canna Stream
Canna Stream has a patent pending on the chemical extraction and fractionation of Cannabinoids and monoterpenes from cannabis flower and biomass using a solvent system that is significantly more efficient than ethanol.

TruExtracts Laboratories
Created for high capacity extraction to meet global demand, TruExtracts is one of Western Canada’s largest cannabis and hemp processors. 

Shift by Alberta Innovates focuses on the people, businesses and organizations that are contributing to Alberta's strong tech ecosystem.

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Prior to remediation, hazardous sites like tailings ponds require analysis, but they're perilous environments for people to go to take measurements. Robots, however, are immune to such perils. Edmonton-based Copperstone Technologies has created a series of autonomous robots that can traverse any terrain to perform site hazardous site investigations.

On this episode we talk with Craig Milne, CEO of Copperstone Technologies about the role the company plays in offering robots as a service to mining companies and others across the globe.

Copperstone helps companies manage liabilities and safety costs associated with hazardous locations including mine waste tailings ponds and infrastructure. They do this by building field robots that can access challenging locations in a way never before possible. Their robots bring sensors or sampling payloads to site, keeping people out of harms way, reducing costs and improving efficiencies for their clients.

Learn more

BIO

Craig is the CEO of Copperstone Technologies, a company bridging robotics, artificial intelligence and the mining industry.  He is a serial entrepreneur with extensive experience in technology-enabled companies, strategy, finance, and business development.  Craig has a PhD in stem cell biology from the University of Toronto and an MBA in Finance from the University of Alberta.

Shift by Alberta Innovates focuses on the people, businesses and organizations that are contributing to Alberta's strong tech ecosystem.

The origins of the first credit union in Alberta in 1938 are very similar to an entrepreneurial journey: gap identified, solution created, trial and tribulations experienced, perseverance rewarded and a modicum of success achieved.

Servus Credit Union has achieved more than a modicum of success and under Garth's tenure of stewardship Servus has gone on to set the bar quite high amongst, not only credit unions, but more traditional banking institutions by achieving unprecedented success on all levels.

How did they do it?

Stewardship and values. Garth tells the story way better than we can, so give this episode a listen!

BIO

Garth Warner, President and Chief Executive Officer of Servus Credit Union

Garth has been a member of the Servus Credit Union family since 1981, starting as a personal banker and advancing through roles of increasing responsibility, up to and including Chief Operating Officer.

In these roles, Garth led Servus’s retail operations division through rapid growth and expansion. This experience served him well when he was appointed President & Chief Executive Officer in 2009, shortly after Servus became Alberta’s first and Canada’s only province-wide credit union.

Under Garth’s leadership Servus has continued to grow, evolve and prosper for its members and employees. Garth earned his MBA in Financial Services in 2003, was inducted into the Credit Union Executive Society Hall of Fame in 2015 and is a graduate of the CUES Certified Credit Union Director Program. Garth is a member of the Business Council of Alberta.

- courtesy of Servus Credit Union

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Hemp has the potential to play a significant role in the future of Alberta's agriculture industry. Shift by Alberta Innovates interviews Jan Slaski of InnoTech Alberta and Aaron Barr, CEO of Canadian Rockies Hemp Corp.

About Jan Slaski:

Over the last 17 years, Jan Slaski has been leading research aimed at introduction and breeding of hemp varieties that suit the needs of the fibre and food industries on the Prairies. To fully realize potential residing within this crop hemp and to assure whole crop utilization Jan assembled a program at InnoTech Alberta offering solutions from “seed to final product” that includes three domains: breeding and agronomy, fibre processing and product development. Since 2012, Jan has been serving hemp industry as a director of the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance. Jan’s research also focuses on the development of best management practices permitting sustainable production of staple (cereals, pulses, canola) and novel (flax, quinoa, Jerusalem artichoke) prairie crops under changing environmental conditions.

About Canadian Rockies Hemp Corp.:

Canadian Rockies Hemp Corporation (CRHC) is an Alberta-based agribusiness focusing on processing hemp at scale for industrial use outputs. Working to develop Alberta as the global hemp processing hub, CRHC is building a bio-refining processing plant in Bruderheim, AB.

Capable of processing 50,000 acres of hemp per year, producing 50,000 tonnes of fibre and 110,000 tonnes of hurd, CRHC is the largest hemp processing plant in North America.

Working with local Alberta farmers, CRHC contracts hemp acres, directly providing specific high-quality feedstock to the Bruderheim Plant.

Shift by Alberta Innovates focuses on the people, businesses and organizations that are contributing to Alberta's strong tech ecosystem.

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Building a robust digital health ecosystem in Alberta needs health delivery partners willing to challenge the status quo in clinical care, and partners that are willing to take the risk of implementing new technologies and involve the patients in the process.

In this episode we talk with Dr. Aly Nanji, CEO and founder of C-health, an Alberta-based healthcare organization. Aly provides insight into how C-health, one of Canada's largest multi-specialty practices, is innovating to improve patient care and create a multispecialty research facility.

BIO 
Dr. Alykhan Nanji started C-health as a single division, known as C-era Medical Clinic, about 16 years ago in Calgary, Alberta. Driven by a desire to make the maximum impact on society, Aly found himself drawn to the medical field in the form of Internal Medicine, building a career as a General Internal Medicine specialist. 

Considering himself a “Health Care Entrepreneur,” Aly wanted to open a clinic that was solely focused on patient care and research. To do this, he got his MBA from Wharton Business School and Master of Public Health from Harvard. With those qualifications, his dream of building a successful patient-centered clinic was on its way.

Shift by Alberta Innovates focuses on the people, businesses and organizations that are contributing to Alberta's strong tech ecosystem.

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Silicon is one of the most common elements on the planet. It's benign, relatively easy to work with and Edmonton-based Applied Quantum Materials has it mastered.

In today's podcast we talk with company CEO David Antoniuk about a recent deal they signed with Alberta Health Services. The deal, which sees the company provide AHS's subsidiary Alberta Precision Laboratories with kits that use AQM’s proprietary MagDx™ technology, including magnetic silicon-based nanoparticles, provides a made-in-Alberta solution to a more secure supply of essential lab reagents needed to detect the disease in patients, lessening the reliance on foreign producers of the much needed reagent.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Join us to learn more...

BIO

Dr. David Antoniuk, CEO & Co-founder of Applied Quantum Materials

David has a Ph.D. in Engineering Physics from the University of Alberta and brings 30 years of business development, product marketing and executive management experience. He has extensive experience in technology commercialization and building strategic business relationships. Prior to forming AQM, he was Director of Business Development for TRLabs, Canada’s largest IT consortium; and Director, Nanotechnology where he formulated the strategy for creating a nanotechnology initiative for the Government of Alberta. David has co-founded several technology start-ups. He currently volunteers as the President of the nanoCluster Alberta Association.

Shift by Alberta Innovates focuses on the people, businesses and organizations that are contributing to Alberta's strong tech ecosystem.

Send us a text

On this episode we speak with Timothy Caulfield about the battle against science misinformation, specifically information related to covid and the vaccines that are coming out.

This is a follow-up conversation with Tim as he appeared in our seventh-ever episode. Always engaging and ever-informative, we had a blast talking with Tim learning about his work and the new initiative #ScienceUpFirst that he's helping to co-lead.

Make sure to listen until the end when he reads excerpts of some of the mail he's received from "fans." (Please note the sarcasm...he tells us he receives plenty of hate mail...)

Enjoy!

Jon and Katie, your Shift buddies 

BIO
Timothy Caulfield is a Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy, a Professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health, and Research Director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta. His interdisciplinary research on topics like stem cells, genetics, research ethics, the public representations of science and public health policy has allowed him to publish over 350 academic articles. 

He has won numerous academic and writing awards and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. 

He contributes frequently to the popular press and is the author of two national bestsellers: 

• The Cure for Everything: Untangling the Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness and Happiness (Penguin 2012) and
• Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?: When Celebrity Culture and Science Clash (Penguin 2015). 

His most recent book is Relax, Dammit!: A User's Guide to the Age of Anxiety (Penguin Random House, 2020).

Caulfield is also the host and co-producer of the award winning documentary TV show, A User's Guide to Cheating Death, which has been shown in over 60 countries, including streaming on Netflix in North America.

Shift by Alberta Innovates focuses on the people, businesses and organizations that are contributing to Alberta's strong tech ecosystem.

Send us a text

Welcome to Shift by Alberta Innovates.

On this episode we speak with Dr. John Lewis from Edmonton-based ENTOS pharmaceuticals about their journey toward creating a made-in-Alberta vaccine for Covid-19.

John walks us through how he and his team's work on genetic medications as a treatment for metastatic cancer created an opportunity to develop a potential Covid vaccine using their proprietary Fusogenix genetic medicines delivery platform.

Along the way we discuss the steps within a clinical trial, how researchers from "competing" labs work together for everyone's benefit,  the implications of the much used phrase "fast tracking" when it comes to the development of medical interventions, his work on something called tumor glue, and much more.

But don't our word for it. Grab seat, click play and learn more about the Journey to Conquer Covid.

BIO

John D. Lewis, Ph.D, founder, Chief Executive Officer of Entos Pharmaceuticals
 
John is the Frank and Carla Sojonky Chair in Prostate Cancer Research at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta.

A scientist and serial entrepreneur, his research interests lie in the areas of nanotechnology and imaging as they relate to the development of novel treatments for chronic diseases such as aging and cancer.

He has pioneered the use of intravital imaging to discover key therapeutic targets in cancer.

Shift by Alberta Innovates focuses on the people, businesses and organizations that are contributing to Alberta's strong tech ecosystem.

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Happy new year!

As one of Canada’s three centres of AI excellence, as part of the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy, the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute in Edmonton, Alberta boasts some serious powerhouses of the artificial intelligence and machine learning world.

People like Richard Sutton, who's widely regarded as the father of reinforcement learning, a branch of machine learning that focuses on how AI should take actions to achieve an end goal. Michael Bowling, who's work with DeepStack (the first AI to beat human professionals at heads-up no-limit Texas hold’em) showed the world that an algorithm can navigate its way through imperfect information to beat humans; Patrick Pilarski and his work with prosthetic limbs; and many many more.

And the team is now turning their heads toward helping Alberta businesses get the strategic advantage that artificial intelligence and machine learning can provide.

Join us for this first episode of the 2021 season. Welcome to Shift.

BIO

Cam Linke is the CEO of the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute in Edmonton, Alberta.

He is a longtime leader in Edmonton’s technology and startup community. Over the past 10 years, he has worked as a CEO, investor, community builder, product manager, software entrepreneur, academic, and developer.

Past roles include co-founder of Startup Edmonton, Founder of Flightpath Ventures, CEO of Touch Metric, Product Manager at Nexopia.com, and Founder of DemoCamp Edmonton. Linke is a sought-after speaker and mentor and has been recognized as Avenue Magazine Top 40 Under 40.

He is also an artificial intelligence researcher, currently studying under Dr. Richard Sutton and Dr. Adam White. His research, which focuses on AI adapting behaviours to improve their own self-learning, has been published at top conferences.

Cam's bio was adapted from the AMII website.

Shift by Alberta Innovates focuses on the people, businesses and organizations that are contributing to Alberta's strong tech ecosystem.

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Phase Sensors is an Edmonton-based company that develops and builds high-performance custom micro-sensors for industrial monitoring in hostile high-temperature and high-pressure environments. (Read more here.)

In 2017, Phase Sensors worked with University of Alberta professor John Davis as part of a Campus Alberta Small Business Engagement grant to build and patent a new sensor, which has since attracted the attention of one of the world’s largest oil & gas companies.

In this podcast we learn more about their collaboration and how a post-secondary institution helped an Alberta SME with the assistance of an Alberta Innovates/NSERC partnership!

BIOS

Chris Holt, founder & CEO, Phase Sensors. Chris has published 24 journal manuscripts, six patent applications and two of these applications have become full US patents and licensed to a private corporation.  He has a passion for building new microfabricated devices and figuring out challenging electronics problems. 

John Davis is an associate professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Alberta. Professor Davis's research focuses on large scale quantum objects, in particular nanomechanical objects at low temperatures and superfluids in restricted geometries.  This work combines precision nanofabrication, cryogenics, optomechanics, and quantum measurement protocols.  He and his team are also interested in putting these devices to good use, especially in future quantum technologies.

Shift by Alberta Innovates focuses on the people, businesses and organizations that are contributing to Alberta's strong tech ecosystem.