Canada51 To Back Women Founders

The Atlantic Women’s Venture Fund and its Alberta counterpart are forming a new organization that they hope will become a nationwide vehicle for supporting female-led businesses.

The new group Canada51 is now a partnership between the AWVF and the Calgary-based female investment group The51.  

In its initial stages, Canada51 will probably involve the two founding organizations and their members

Continue Reading

Propel CEO Bisson To Retire in Fall

Propel CEO Barry Bisson has announced he will retire in the fall of this year, so the Atlantic Canadian tech accelerator has begun its search for his replacement.

The pan-regional organization issued a statement Monday evening, saying its board of directors has formed a search committee to lead the effort in partnership with the executive search firm Chapman Group. 

Propel said it hopes to

Continue Reading

Call for Short-Term Ocean Projects

Canada’s Ocean Supercluster is seeking applications from across Canada for short-term, innovative projects that will help stimulate economic activity.

Under the Accelerated Ocean Solutions Program, the federally backed supercluster—which partners with private industry to fund research and development— will spend up to $35 million to back small-scale projects that can be brought to market in less

Continue Reading

Dal Rated #85 in Impact Rankings

Dalhousie University has been recognized by Times Higher Education magazine for its work on the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The publication’s University Impact Rankings rated Dalhousie 85th out of 767 universities that participated in its 2020 report.

Institutions were required to report their progress on at least six of the 17 UN goals. Dalhousie reported on seven and aims

Continue Reading

CDL-Recovery Fights Covid-19

Science and technology accelerator Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) is launching a new program focused on bolstering efforts to fight COVID-19.

CDL Recovery will be a joint project with Montreal-based artificial intelligence hub Scale AI. It will aim to rapidly commercialize innovations that could help protect public health or accelerate the economic recovery.

The program will be open to

Continue Reading

Oliver POS Wins Gerry Pond Award

St. John’s-based retail software company Oliver POS has won Propel’s Gerry Pond Sales Award for 2020.

Created last year to honour the chairman of Saint John technology company Mariner Partners, the award grants one member of Propel’s Incite II accelerator cohort $25,000 cash and an optional $30,000 of investment from Innovacorp and the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.

Pond, who also heads

Continue Reading

Propel Holds Virtual Demo Day

Propel, the Atlantic Canadian tech accelerator, held its annual Demo Day on Friday, during which nine founders from the latest Incite II cohort presented their companies.

As may be expected during the pandemic, it was an online event, with the founders delivering their pitches in a pre-recorded format, then answering live questions from their homes or offices.

Phase 2 of Incite runs for seven

Continue Reading

Jobs: Two at Ashored Innovations

Dartmouth-based oceantech company Ashored Innovations continues to grow and is hiring a Director of Engineering and a Software Engineer – two postings that headline our Jobs of the Week column.

Ashored has developed fishing equipment that reduces the dangers of animals such as whales becoming entangled in ropes as well as the hazards posed by lost equipment littering the ocean floor. Its first

Continue Reading

Tranquility Aids Healthcare Workers

Mental health startup Tranquility Online is collaborating with a Halifax charity, Partners For Care, to provide free services to healthcare workers in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Founded in 2017, Tranquility’s website and app offer an automated, digital version of cognitive behavioral therapy—a form of psychotherapy designed to cultivate self-awareness and short-circuit harmful patterns

Continue Reading