News

Sully, Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger III, landed US Air Flight 1549 on the Hudson River in a New York minute after a double bird strike at 3,000 feet disabled both his engines.

Professor Suzanne Kearns, an Assistant Professor in the Commercial Aviation Management program at Western University, designed the m-Safety iPhone application to improve and maintain pilot safety skills at the highest level. She would happily program in the reflexes of a pilot with 40 years of experience in fighter jets and commercial aviation. “I wish there was a way to digitize Sully,” she says with a laugh.

Kearns knows first-hand about aviation accidents having lost a close acquaintance in her training years. She earned her pilot’s license by her sixteenth birthday and has a Masters in Human Factors and Systems from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, a degree in aviation safety.

Kearns, who also holds a PhD in Instructional Design for Online Learning made it her mission to build web and mobile based learning courses for pilots. “This is a mobile concept with several “snap courses” that are interactive and take about five minutes to complete,” she says. m-Safety is focused on “soft skills” such as communications, leadership, decision making, situational awareness and workload management.

She designed m-Safety to help pilots with one of their greatest training challenges – to remember information long after they leave class. “Followup for retention is where mobile is important,” she says. “After a week, people only remember 20% of what was taught in a classroom.”

Kearns developed m-Safety with support from WORLDiscoveries. “They have helped me with everything. WORLDiscoveries helped me secure capital through the Western Innovation Fund to build a prototype,” she says. “Without their support m-Safety would stay in the theory stage.”

In four years, WORLDiscoveries® has moved beyond a concept to become one of the leading commercialization centres in Canada and a material contributor to the growing partnership between academics and commerce, research and business, local institutions and the local community.

I am pleased to share with you the WORLDiscoveries® Annual Report for the 2012 Fiscal Year. This edition, entitled Cutting Edge, highlights some of the stories, strategies and successes behind WORLDiscoveries® fourth year as the combined business development entity for Western University, and the City of London’s two internationally-recognized research institutions, Robarts Research Institute and the Lawson Health Research Institute.

It is hard to believe that four years have passed since these three founding institutions collectively set aside many of the antiquated policies and positions that had inhibited technology transfer in the past, and pooled their resources in favour of a new, enabling model, designed to focus those resources on the most promising commercially-biased research, the most promising inventions and the most promising market opportunities for both economic and social gain.

At the time, it was considered a rather bold experiment, especially given the limited success of similar efforts in the past. However, through the collective commitment of the staff, the Board, the leaders at the three institutions and the research community itself, WORLDiscoveries® moved beyond a concept to become one of the leading commercialization centres in Canada and a material contributor to the growing partnership between academics and commerce, research and business, local institutions and the local community.

I am very proud to have served as the Executive Director of this office since its inception and prouder still of the men and women behind the organization’s continually impressive track record. I am also very proud to be associated with such outstanding researchers, educators and academic leaders, who continue to drive the next generation of knowledge, invention and social benefit in our community and around the globe. In the pages that follow, I am pleased to share with you some of the stories behind this success. The people and the inventions featured in each story represent some of the most cutting edge work going on anywhere in the world today. WORLDiscoveries® is very pleased to have played a small role in helping bring this valuable work to market and remains committed to supporting our research clients, our institutional founders and our local community.

Paul Paolatto
Executive Director