In June 2021, Queen’s University announced its membership with Hub350, powered by the Kanata North Business Association (KNBA). Home to Canada’s largest technology park, Kanata North is renowned as a vibrant region for technology and innovation. Since joining, Queen’s has collaborated and partnered with the Kanata North members on a variety of initiatives.
Most recently, Queen’s took part in the first-ever Hub350 Annual Partner Summit in Kanata, which brought together industry, financial and academic partners to celebrate and strengthen existing collaborations and build new connections. Jim Banting, Queen’s Assistant Vice-Principal (Research) participated in the academic panel, where he discussed Queen’s history of working with Ottawa and how the university’s decision to join Hub350 was a natural extension of the working relationship with the region.
The Hub350 event also included demonstrations from the Telus 5G Innovation Zone as well as the L-Spark/Hub350 Living Lab.
The following release was written by Queen’s Partnership Development Officer, Shoma Sinha, for the Hub350 Partners in the Tech Talk 2022 publication.
Hub350’s Academic Anchor Partners
The innovation ecosystem in Kanata North is a vibrant and growing network catalyzing market and social impacts of talent, new technology, products, and services. The three pillars of Industry, Investment, and Academia each contribute vital elements to this system as Hub350 is strategically designed to enhance the ecosystem and accelerate company growth by enabling collaborations between these pillars. At a time when we are all excited to connect in person once again, Hub350 is supporting reconnections, new connections and collaborations for a stronger tomorrow.
Hub350’s mission to foster a vibrant culture of collaboration, where the talent of today and the talent of tomorrow can live, work, play, learn, and innovate, truly resonates with the members of its Academic Pillar. Since the launch of Hub350 a year ago, the inaugural members of the pillar – Algonquin College, Carleton University, the University of Ottawa, and Queen’s University – have each been creating and participating in opportunities to engage and explore collaborations with the over 500 members of the Kanata North Technology Park as well as with each other. The vision is for such opportunities to build students’ skills, networks, and experience, and provide pathways to enhance research and development, while synergistically enabling companies to communicate their needs, particularly with respect to talent, expertise, and technology, which will inform and shape collaboration strategies and opportunities with post-secondary institutions.
Through the members of the Academic Pillar, the full potential to support the immense talent available and developed at the institutions, improve knowledge mobilization, as well as increase efficiencies through collaboration across post-secondaries is just starting to be realized. Initiatives during this past year have enabled students to connect with experiential learning, career, and professional development opportunities through resources such as the Discover Technata job board as well as over 20 events in partnership with or leveraging the space at the Hub350. Some special highlights include the Discover Technata Career Fair, Discover Technata Unlocked, and Discover Technata Hacks.
New interconnections are also supporting the development of research collaborations that leverage cutting edge knowledge from across science and technology, health and medical, policy, education, and business communities at the post-secondaries to support next generation products, services, and companies of the future.
As the Academic Pillar continues to establish itself, the physical space at Hub350, the community in the technology park, and the advantages of the Special Economic District Zone designation bring exciting prospects for academic collaboration. The space provides a modern and inviting environment and culture for students, faculty, industry executives, and support providers to work and connect through organized meetings, events as well as impromptu collisions. Moreover, the variety of companies and participating members and opportunities for ‘living labs’ enrich the ecosystem, creating an environment to greatly enhance technology development and validation.
In order to build a strong and impactful Academic Pillar, the post-secondaries are keen to better understand, learn and respond to the needs from the broader Hub350 and Kanata North community. How could we work together to support your needs to effectively build stronger companies and an effective innovation ecosystem?
Quotes:
“Partnership with Hub350 and participation in the academic pillar furthers our ability to provide increased value to our industry and community partners. Having a direct connection to Canada’s largest tech park allows us to contribute to the tech industry’s talent pipeline while also ensuring our courses, corporate training programs, micro-credentials, and applied research offerings offer relevant solutions to the challenges faced by industry here in the National Capital Region.”
- Kristine Dawson, Associate Vice President, Experiential Learning and Innovation, Algonquin College
“Carleton University has made the most of its collaborative space in Hub350 to connect talent at all levels with the innovations and opportunities in Kanata North. In addition to our outstanding co-op program, hackathons and career events for our Carleton students, we are linking to youth of all ages with our Generation Changemaker program for high school students and our new PD Day camps in Kanata, offered in partnership with Virtual Ventures and Carleton Ravens. Our space has also provided us with numerous opportunities for creative collisions between business leaders in the tech park and the next generation of innovators, through TECHNATA Hackathon, Entrepreneur Pitch Competitions and Executive Education. Watch this space for new initiatives to bring great minds together. We hope to CU@Kanata.”
- Dana Brown, Dean at Sprott School of Business, Carleton University and KNBA Board of Directors member
“Since opening uOttawa’s satellite campus in 2018, and establishing the first academic-industry research laboratory in the Park – the Smart Connected Vehicle Innovation Centre – we have worked relentlessly to multiply our partnerships around talent, training and innovative research partnerships. We look forward to welcoming the Kanata North community to our new, second location in Hub350. Our presence in Kanata North was a strategic decision to help strengthen our local innovation ecosystem, and the dividends are already paying off for Kanata North, for the 380+(TBD by the KNBA) technology companies located here, for our students and our researchers.”
- Guy Levesque, Associate Vice-President, Innovation, Partnerships and Entrepreneurship, Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation
“Queen’s University is keen to support building the academic pillar in order to understand industry needs and build synergistic relationships. For example, the opportunity to partner with Hub350 and the University of Ottawa to deliver Academic-Industry Meeting Day (AIMdayTM) Mobility provided unique opportunities to support matching academic expertise with industry and municipal challenges in the advanced mobility sector with the goal of developing solutions through collaboration.”
- Jim Banting, Assistant Vice-Principal (Partnerships and Innovation), Queen’s University