BACKGROUNDER

April 24, 2007

PREMIER'S CATALYST AWARDS

The Premier's Catalyst Awards recognize both individuals and companies that have demonstrated excellence in innovation. The goal of this new program is to help build a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in Ontario.

Five annual awards are presented to individuals and companies that have championed a new, or significantly improved, product or service based on a breakthrough technology. Innovations must be commercially successful and have the potential for positive impact on Ontario's economy, society or sustainable development.

One award of $200,000 is given in each of the following categories:

Best Young Innovator
Innovator of the Year
Lifetime Achievement in Innovation
Start-up Company with the Best Innovation
Company with the Best Innovation

This year’s award recipients are:

Best Young Innovator

Parham Aarabi
Toronto, Ontario

Searching data bases with visual criteria
University of Toronto professor Dr. Parham Aarabi is the founder and president of ViewGenie Inc. Spun off from a project Dr. Aarabi led at the U of T, ViewGenie offers a system that lets users search image databases and locate specific objects based on their visual content. For example, to search for a person in a database of photos, the user simply selects one instance of the person's face. The ViewGenie system then displays all images containing instances of the same person. ViewGenie can perform content-based searches for any object, from cars to human faces to buildings.

Known as a "disruptive" technology, Dr. Aarabi's innovation changes the entire nature of image/video viewing, searching and navigation. ViewGenie establishes Ontario as a centre of excellence and innovation for the next generation of applications and websites on the World Wide Web. It is already being used as a novel "virtual tour" method in several applications, including one for the University of Toronto.

Dr. Aarabi has received national and international recognition for his innovation, including selection as a Canada Research Chair, the Ontario government's Early Researcher Award, and the prestigious "World's Top Innovator Under the Age of 35 Award" from MIT Technology Review. Past recipients of the MIT award include the founders of Google and Yahoo! and the creator of the Linux operating system.

Website: www.viewgenie.com

Innovator of the Year

En-Hui Yang
Waterloo, Ontario

Speeding data transmission
In 2000, Dr. Yang co-founded SlipStream Data Inc., a Waterloo-based company whose software accelerates data transmission over digital communications channels. Users see a dramatic difference: faster Web browsing, image loading and file transfer, all with less bandwidth. Now used by over 2,000 Internet Service Providers and Application Service Providers around the world, SlipStream's technology is recognized as one of the most significant advances in lossless data compression in the last 20 years.

The technology dates back to 1995, when Dr. Yang co-developed a new lossless compression theory. He spent the next two years coding, refining and testing a computer application that used the algorithm to speed data transmission over any network. Outperforming all of its competitors, SlipStream has gone from a concept to a company that dominates its sector worldwide and employs over 60 Ontarians in the high-tech industry.

Dr. Yang has received numerous awards and accolades as a researcher and innovator, including General Co-Chair, 2008 IEEE Conference on Information Theory, Premier's Research Excellence Award (2000), and the Ontario Distinguished Researcher Award (2002). SlipStream, which was recently purchased by Research In Motion, won an Ontario Global Traders Award for market expansion in 2006.

Website: www.slipstream.com

Lifetime Achievement in Innovation

Savvas Chamberlain
DALSA Corporation
Waterloo, Ontario

A world leader in professional digital imaging
Combining his pioneering technologies in digital imaging with persistence in securing start-up funding, Dr. Savvas Chamberlain displays every aspect of the successful innovator. He founded DALSA Corporation in 1980, when the general consensus was that Ontario could not succeed in the highly competitive semi-conductor industry.

Dr. Chamberlain proved the naysayers wrong. Today, DALSA employs 350 people in Ontario (a total of 1,010 worldwide) and has revenues of over $186 million annually, 95 per cent of which is from exports to the United States, Europe and Asia. A world leader in high-performance digital imaging and semiconductors, DALSA has stimulated industry growth in the Waterloo region.

The company was built on Dr. Chamberlain's discoveries related to charge-coupled devices (CCDs), the electronic light sensors used in digital imaging. He holds 22 patents for inventions that form the core of the company's technologies for digital imaging sensors, cameras and systems. DALSA's image sensors are used worldwide and beyond: they include the image sensors on NASA's Mars Rovers and the cameras on the Canadarm 2.

Website: www.dalsa.com

Start-up Company with the Best Innovation

Tessonics Inc.
Windsor, Ontario

A better way for Ontario's auto industry
Each of the approximately 4,000 spot welds that are used to build the average new vehicle has the potential for a flaw. Automakers traditionally test spot welds with random "tear-down" tests that are time-consuming, expensive and wasteful. Dr. Roman Maev, a physicist and material characterization researcher at the University of Windsor, came up with a better way. He is the founding scientist of Tessonics Inc., a joint venture of DaimlerChrysler and his physics research team at the university.

Incorporated in early 2005, Tessonics produced the first portable handheld spot-weld analyzer that uses new acoustic and acousto-optic imaging systems. Capable of producing images of any spot weld's structure, the system has already generated over $4 million in sales to automakers around the world.

Rapidly-growing Tessonics has created nine new high-value jobs and is expanding its product line to enter new markets. The company is using its expertise in ultrasonic diagnostics to enter the biomedical field, and recently won two R&D projects for the United States Department of Defence to manufacture biomedical diagnostic instrumentation. Under the leadership of Dr. Maev, a world-renowned expert in high-resolution imaging, Tessonics is also developing new inspection and imaging systems to be used in other manufacturing and medical applications.

Website: www.tessonics.com

Company with the Best Innovation

Research In Motion
Waterloo, Ontario

The Blackberry revolutionizes mobile communication
Research In Motion (RIM), an Ontario success story, was founded in 1984 in Waterloo, Ontario. Today, RIM operates offices in North America, Europe and Asia and is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market.

RIM's best-known product is the award-winning BlackBerry, which sets the standard for wireless communication by offering the breakthrough of letting users access email through wireless data networks.
After its launch in 1999, BlackBerry quickly gained popularity around the world and by early 2004, BlackBerry had one million subscribers. In the following 10 months, its subscribers doubled to two million. Today, there are approximately eight million BlackBerry subscribers on six continents generating revenues of more than $US 2 billion in fiscal year 2006.

RIM has grown into a company that employs over 5,000 people worldwide, with 3,500 jobs in Ontario, and has raised the province's high-tech manufacturing profile. In addition, RIM executives have made substantial personal reinvestments in Ontario including the establishment of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, and The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).

Website: www.rim.net