GOVERNMENT

Research and business leaders are gathering in Toronto early next month to explore the impact and potential of next-generation innovation and "jobs of the future" at the CANARIE and ORION National Summit. Global innovation guru Dr. John Kao is among a prestigious roster of distinguished leaders coming together at "Powering Innovation - a National Summit" at the Metro Toronto Convention Center November 3 and 4. Kao, dubbed "a serial innovator" by The Economist, is a leading authority on organizational transformation and digital media. Kao draws on his experience teaching at Harvard Business School and his appointments at the MIT Media Lab, Yale College, and the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. Former University of Toronto President Robert Birgeneau, now Chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, returns to Toronto as opening keynote to set the stage for the conference, and address the importance of innovation and cross-border collaboration in research. The conference is hosted by ORION and CANARIE, Ontario's and Canada's advanced research network organizations which link scientists, researchers and innovators across the province, country and around the world. Cybera, Alberta's Cyberinfrastructure for Innovation organization, is contributing significantly to the planning and staging of the national Summit. The conference is expected to bring up to 250 delegates from universities, colleges, research facilities, centres of excellence and other organizations - including government and industry. "Developing innovative solutions for tomorrow's problems is an objective around which we all can rally," says CANARIE President and C.E.O. Guy Bujold. "Our conference program is designed to inspire the development and encourage the use of network tools by Canada's researchers, educators and business leaders." "We have invited some of the brightest minds in the country to come to the Summit and challenge them to take full advantage of new and emerging e-science technologies that are driving innovation, scientific discovery and jobs of the future, here and around the world," says ORION President/CEO Phil Baker. Other keynotes include the President of Internet2 Doug Van Houweling, the President of the Ontario College of Art & Design Sara Diamond, host of CBC Radio's Spark Nora Young, Delvinia Interactive's Adam Froman, and Ron Dembo, President/CEO of Zerofootprint. Delegates will also engage with experts from e-science, virtual organizations, network-enabled platforms, the greening of information technology, visualization technologies, teaching and learning in a web 2.0 universe, and commercialization of innovation. The Summit also showcases advancements at the cutting edge of research, from high-definition holographic printing, to IP-based television platforms, to research collaborations using world-leading optical networks like CANARIE's and ORION's that quickly transmit massive amounts of data in seconds across Canada and around the world, allowing our researchers to participate fully in international collaborations. The Summit will also give delegates a first look at national scientific research projects that help position Canada among the world's leaders in many fields, from global-scale high performance computing, to cancer research, to climate change simulation. The summit is made possible by the generous contribution of our sponsors, including gold sponsor Juniper Networks; silver sponsor SHARCNET; bronze sponsors Bell, the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning Program; Cogent Communications, Colleges Ontario and IBM; and partner sponsors Atria Networks, Auto 21, Cybera, the Ontario Centres of Excellence, the Ontario College of Art & Design, Polycom, Tech Media Reports and Ryerson University. Learn more at its Web site.