Inspiring UBC Innovators Pitch to Win

Adapted from Innovation UBC's original article here

Inspiring innovation is at the heart of what we do at entrepreneurship@UBC, and we were pleased to help inspiring UBC innovators pitch to win at the first ever Innovation UBC Start-Up Idea Competition for the life sciences.

The competition was designed for teams with ideas based on UBC research, guiding them through a series of educational sessions led by industry experts with the chance to pitch in the final competition that happened Thursday, April 30th. In the end, 6 teams were successful, completing several months worth of work around their venture idea and then pitching, virtually, to over 80 UBC community members, industry guests and esteemed judges across Vancouver's life science innovation ecosystem.

Emceed by Sean Lumb, entrepreneurship@UBC’s Associate Director, Lab2Launch, the event was a thrilling hour of inspiring presentations, community support and fantastic outcomes for all. The 3 winning teams - CHIMERA, Flutter Wear and AMiNDR- were announced by UBC’s Vice-President of Research & Innovation, Gail Murphy, and are the recipients of cash prizes, provisional patent services provided by the UILO and start-up legal services provided by the event’s generous sponsor, Lawson Lundell LLP.

The Innovation UBC Start-up Idea Competition was delivered by entrepreneurship@UBC, the University Industry Liaison Office (UILO), and the Innovation Partnerships team, who along with UBC’s Knowledge Exchange Unit, represent Innovation UBC. As UBC’s venture building program, notable for helping to launch leading edge research into viable companies, entrepreneurship@UBC was thrilled to be a part of this event to help nurture the university’s ecosystem of innovators and researchers and looks forward to supporting them in the next steps of their venture building journeys.

Find out more about the competition and who pitched, here

entrepreneurship@UBC would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to all those involved, with special recognition to the event’s sponsor, Lawson Lundell and our judges, noted below:

• Jennifer Marles, Partner, Oyen Wiggs Green & Mutala LLP

• Andrew Robertson, Associate, Lawson Lundell LLP

• Ashish Sant, entrepreneurship@UBC Mentor and SFU Executive in Residence

• Cynthia Shippam, Industrial Technology Advisor, NRC-CNRC National Research Council Canada, IRAP-PARI Industrial Research Assistance Program

• Allyson Tighe, Associate, Amplitude VC

• Matthew Wiggin, Senior Research Scientist, AbCellera Biologics Inc.