News

Claire Crooks has been named the WORLDiscoveries Annual Vanguard Awards – Innovator of the Year.

Crooks is a clinical psychologist, professor at the Faculty of Education and Director of the Centre for School Mental Health, where she and her team develop, implement, and evaluate mental health promotion and violence prevention programs in a range of school and community settings.

Her research looks at the gaps between science, practice and policy related to the healthy development of children and youth.

Along with a team of fellow researchers, Crooks has developed the Fourth R, a curriculum that is based on the principal that relationship skills can and should be taught in much the same way as reading, writing and arithmetic.

The Fourth R is a comprehensive school-based program designed to include students, teachers, parents, and the community in addressing youth violence and bullying, unsafe sexual behaviour, and substance use.

Based on the idea that education needs to involve more than the traditional three R’s – reading, writing and arithmetic – the Fourth R stands for relationships. The program emphasizes the importance of healthy relationships in stopping violence.

The Fourth R was developed at Western’s Centre for School Mental Health and London’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health by researchers David Wolfe, Claire Crooks, Ray Hughes, and Peter Jaffe. The curriculum and has been adopted by more than 5,000 schools in Canada and the U.S.

Western has recruited a group of skilled scientists, engineers and medical practitioners from around the world to be part of the eighth cohort of its Medical Innovation Fellowship (MIF) program.

The program takes place over 10.5 months where fellows will learn about topics relevant to business and technology commercialization, prior to being immersed in clinics, where they identify market needs. They then develop and prototype solutions by working with researchers, clinicians, and technology transfer offices to generate new intellectual property. Graduates of the program have become leaders in industry, research and health care and have started their own companies.

Starting this August, the fellows will complete a boot camp that lays the groundwork for the rest of the fellowship meeting with academic researchers, clinicians, industry representatives, and venture capitalists that provide training on innovation, prototyping, intellectual property, regulatory affairs, and business strategy.

Alumnus applies innovations developed in lab to exclusively licensed venture

Western alumnus Hisham Hafez, PhD’10, MBA’19, is taking his innovative bio-fuel process from the lab to market as the Senior Director, Renewable Natural Gas Projects at Greenfield Global, a producer of high purity alcohols, solvents, biofuels, and bio-processing materials.

Hafez was a doctoral student in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department when he was approached by a Greenfield executive during a poster presentation, interested in his research involving converting waste biomass into biological hydrogen and methane using a novel process he developed and patented throughout the course of his program.

The Western Innovation Fellows (MIF) have won a cash prize of $25,000 by landing the top position in the 2022 MSK Innovation Competition.

First launched in the spring of 2019, the MSK competition aims to cultivate innovative ideas that can be pitched to investors and promote an entrepreneurial spirit. The stage of development is not restricted for entrants and anyone on the commercialization path is welcome to participate. The competition is open to all London-based entrepreneurial musculoskeletal experts. The initiative is hosted by the Bone and Joint Institute and the Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship at Western.

A new program, funded by the Strategic Priorities Fund, seeks to provide a year-round mentorship program for women and underrepresented principal investigators, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students and training in technology transfer, research commercialization, intellectual property, and entrepreneurship.

The program was a result of an equity, diversity, and inclusion assessment that identified a gap in the number of disclosures of innovation with lead female principal investigators.

Piloted by WORLDiscoveries, the business development arm of a research partnership between Western, Robarts Research Institute and Lawson, the WE-Empower program, joins other programming like the Western Medical Innovation Fellowship and Graduate Student Innovation Scholars to help promote the commercialization of research innovations coming from our partner institutions.

The group of six fellows for the 2021/22 cohort have completed their 10.5-month journey through the Western Medical Innovation Fellowship (MIF) program and have participated in a boot camp, clinical immersions and developed a new invention. Fellows Oleksiy Zaika and Sydney Robinson will be taking their innovation to market by starting Vessl Prosthetics.

Their solution adjusts independently to change how amputees interact with their prostheses – enhancing comfort by avoiding common problems related to socket fit. Vessl’s invention is a simple, intuitive, and easy to use socket system that passively adjusts to changes in limb volume.

By allowing users and clinicians to accelerate the path to compatible prosthetic solutions, Vessl aims to save clinical costs and empower amputees to regain their health and well-being. Their technology intervenes at the most critical time, ensuring that amputees have the chance to recover and embrace their prosthetics as a way to live a fulfilled life.