Newsbites (Page 4)

Newsbites (Page 4) McGill University

| Skip to search Skip to navigation Skip to page content

User Tools (skip):

Sign in | Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Sister Sites: McGill website | myMcGill

McGill News
ALUMNI QUARTERLY - winter 2008
McGill News cover

| Help
Page Options (skip): Larger
Home > McGill News > 2002 > Spring 2002 > Newsbites > Newsbites (Page 4)

Newsbites (Page 4)

Crushed in a good cause

Photo PHOTOS: Owen Egan

Members of McGill's student clubs got really up close and personal on January 24 when they squashed into a PT Cruiser in an effort to win $5,000. The Students' Society won the car in DaimlerChrysler Canada's nationwide "Paint a PT Cruiser and Win It" contest, which was launched on university campuses across the country last summer in an effort to support campus DriveSafe organizations. These are student-run services that offer students free, safe transportation home from various campus activities and functions.

McGill's artistic efforts beat out those of nine other campuses. "The car was parked on campus for a day during Frosh orientation week," explained DriveSafe Volunteer Coordinator Deb Hintz, BSc'02. "As students were passing by, going to and from various activities, they were able to add their idea to the car with washable spray paint. The final result was a collaborative effort by the McGill students and displayed on the Internet. McGill beat out the other universities by demonstrating school spirit and supporting the contest by voting online."

Photo Students' Society president Jeremy Farrell, BA'02, happily accepts Cruiser keys.

When DaimlerChrysler later offered to make a further donation to a local charity, the Students' Society came up with the idea of a car-stuffing contest among student clubs. Each group had two minutes to fit as many people as possible into the vehicle. Members of the Sexual Assault Centre of McGill's Students' Society (SACOMSS) proved to be the most compact, cramming in a total of 27 people. Once all its occupants had been extracted, the Cruiser was handed over to the campus DriveSafe organization. Since starting up in the fall of 1999 during Frosh week, McGill DriveSafe has expanded to offer services year round, thanks to 50 volunteers led by five executive coordinators. "DriveSafe is expected to surpass 6,500 users this year," Hintz says. "The PT Cruiser can be used for various purposes, such as promotional events and providing a presence on campus, as well as allowing us to respond to events that come up at the last minute. Basically, it allows us to be a more flexible service." The $5,000 will also be put to good use according to Judith Rae, the Director of SACOMSS, who says her organization will donate the money to a downtown women's shelter.

St. Pierre Scores Olympic Gold

Photo

More than six million Canadians watched as the Canadian Women's Olympic hockey team battled the U.S. team and atrocious refereeing to capture the gold medal in Salt Lake City in February. Members of the McGill community had even more reason for pride as they watched Faculty of Education student Kim St. Pierre turn back power play after power play to allow Canada to win one of the most exciting hockey games seen on Canadian television in a long time by a final score of 3-2. American referee Stacey Livingston called 11 penalties against the Canadian women, eight of them in succession, but St. Pierre allowed only two goals out of 33 shots and was named the first star of the game and top women's goalie of the Olympic tournament.

The Chateauguay native took a leave from her studies at McGill to train and play with the Olympic team and will resume her program in kinesiology and physical education in September.

Triple Threat

Photo

Some of McGill's promising research discoveries may soon be leaping more quickly from campus labs to the marketplace. Over the last few years, that jump, known as technology transfer, has involved increasingly complex negotiations regarding patents, contracts, intellectual property protection, government regulations and the securing of venture capital. Such a broad mandate can be overwhelming for an individual university's technology transfer staff.

Help may be at hand now that McGill has teamed up with Sherbrooke and Bishop's universities to launch an independent firm called MSBI that will help commercialize research developed at each institution. An acronym for "McGill, Sherbrooke and Bishop's Innovation," MSBI will manage a $26-million venture capital fund that will be invested in research projects from each university.

The creation of MSBI was made possible through a $15 million grant from Valorisation-Recherche QuÈbec (VRQ). Founded by the Government of Quebec in March 1999, the VRQ's mandate is to help promote the commercialization of research conducted by educational and research institutions for the betterment of society and to create jobs. The remaining $11 million was raised through MSBI limited partners.

Headquartered off-campus in Montreal, MSBI will be Canada's first venture capital firm to comprise both English and French universities, as well as their affiliated research hospitals. These include the McGill University Health Centre, the McGill-affiliated Jewish General and Douglas hospitals, as well as the Centre hospitalier de l'UniversitÈ de Sherbrooke.

MSBI has been mandated to provide seed and early-stage venture capital to commercialize discoveries in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, bioinformatics, software/communications and networking technologies. Average MSBI investments will range between $250,000 and $500,000, but exceptional projects could receive up to $1 million in financing.

Working closely with the technology transfer offices of its partner institutions, MSBI will be offered a right of first review of approximately 100 research innovations per year. Of these, MSBI aims to invest in and support the development of approximately 10 research innovations annually.

Jan Peeters, BEng'73, and Ian Soutar, BEng'58, two members of McGill's Board of Governors, helped transform MSBI from concept to reality over the last 18 months. Peeters says he immediately recognized the importance of creating MSBI as a new investment source.

"There's a tremendous pool of researchers who are starving for the necessary funding to bring their intellectual property into the marketplace," says Peeters, who will chair MSBI's board of directors. He is also the CEO of Montreal-based Olameter Inc., a communications management company. "MSBI will be a catalyst that will give academic ideas a fiscal shot at commercialization. Without MSBI, an awful lot of innovations wouldn't get funding and make it out of the gate."

There's also hope that MSBI innovations will be marketed beyond Canada. "MSBI spin-offs will have no geographic boundaries," Peeters says.

For more on technology transfer at McGill, see www.mcgill.ca/news/archives/winter2000/market.

view sidebar content | back to top of page

Search