![]() What makes the CIC special for you, and what do you want to make sure people know about it? Here again the Governance Task Force has a mandate to examine how the CIC might be reorganized to make it more open and attractive to these partners, in ways that add value to their operations. This could mean soliciting more industry participation in panels at conferences, or perhaps student-oriented sessions dedicated to start-ups. The CIC must therefore reach out to these organizations and build bridges to them on behalf of its members. Many of our members will also be involved with multinational corporations or the country’s federally operated national laboratories. In fact, Canada has some of the highest rates of student-led start-ups in the developed world. But at the end of the day, a large portion of the student members - as well as a lot of faculty-based members - will find themselves working with small- to medium-sized enterprises of one sort or another. ![]() What can be done to build up these other relationships?Īcademia is important and the CIC needs to maintain its extensive links to this sector. With the CIC and its constituent societies, a great deal of the membership and their activities are rooted in the academic sector, but there are also links with industry and government. ![]() The CIC absolutely needs to retain what’s it’s good at, so this committee’s work will help us preserve the best and introduce the better. For just that reason, I expect one of the key features of my tenure here to be the work of the Governance Task Force, which will review the organization and provide the guidance we need to usher in these changes. Today, in order to respond appropriately and quickly enough to satisfy the needs of our members, innovations in governance and structure need to be introduced. The success of that response could well be determined by changing in the CIC’s basic structure, which remember was put in place in 1921, with the current CIC being established in 1945. The Future of Work is changing and the CIC needs to adapt to ensure it is at the forefront of this change for its membersĪll of this creates our leading challenge: how do you make the CIC interactive with the membership? The reality is that the members essentially own and run this organization, and we must respond accordingly if they want new and different things from it. It has changed the expectations and requirements that members attach to the CIC, which are nothing like they were when it was founded and substantially different from what they were even a decade or two ago. This is especially obvious in the way we work, communicate and interact, as individuals as well as an organization. But even before the pandemic, it was clear that technology, economics, and politics were changing the world in dramatic ways, and doing so at an unprecedented pace. For almost 100 years it has been very effective at developing a professional ecosystem across this Canada, pulling us together and giving large numbers of Canadian scientists a practical identity and a network for collaboration. The CIC’s long history has made it a powerhouse in Canada. The pandemic is obviously shaping a great deal of what CIC and practically every other organization is doing at the moment, but what are some of the longer-term priorities you are considering, which pre-date the pandemic and transcend its more immediate impact? I’m pleased to bring my own experience to this responsibility. This is a dynamic that mirrors the make-up of the CIC, which is extraordinary to the extent that it oversees this same kind of multidisciplinary mixture. They all collaborate on common goals, often bringing different insights and skills sets to one another’s challenges. The Xerox Research Centre of Canada has a remarkable breadth of disciplines and expertise within it - chemists, chemical engineers, chemical physicists, technologists. But as I interacted with the team around me, it became obvious to them and to me that I could bring a very different - and valuable - background to this post. ![]() He recently took a few questions from CIC NEWS.Īfter years of participating with the Board, how did you wind up becoming the Chair? In that capacity he has played a key role in turning this global research facility in Mississauga into a global innovation hub for the development of advanced materials, such as 3D materials and integration and devices aimed at cirtical areas in Industry 4.0. Paul Smith, the new chair of Chemical Institute of Canada Board of Directors, is Vice President of Xerox Corporation and Centre Director of the Xerox Research Centre of Canada.
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