Funding, News and Announcements

The new Lab2Market program [PDF - 2.7 MB] is an opportunity for graduate students and postdocs to develop innovation, entrepreneurship skills and competencies by exploring the applied or commercial potential of their research projects. Lab2Market empowers participants to become catalysts in the innovation economy and make an impact locally, nationally and globally. Participant teams will be awarded $15,000 CAD to cover travel expenses.   

The program requires a significant commitment of time, typically 25 hours per week. By the end of the program, participants will:

• Learn the key concepts of business model generation and customer/user discovery
• Develop and test hypotheses about their business model
• Engage with key commercial stakeholders
• Complete a business model canvas and understand the discipline and process of commercialization, innovation and entrepreneurship
• Build critical thinking, collaboration, communication, innovation and entrepreneurship skills

All current graduate students, doctoral students, post-doctoral researchers and faculty are eligible for the Lab2Market program. The Dalhousie cohort of Lab2Market will be running September 21-24. Additionally, there will be a special Ocean cohort in St John's running from September 15-17.

Lab Crawls

Additionally, Lab2Market will be organizing Lab Crawls this Spring on March 5, March 19, and April 6, as well as a Research2Innovation program on April 27-29, and the Ready2Launch Accelerator this Summer.

• Lab Crawls are half-day events involve inviting principal investigators and their graduate students and postdocs to a “Lunch & Learn” about Dalhousie’s commercialization and startup programming, and in particular Research2Innovator and Lab2Market, and Creative Destruction Lab. This is followed by visits to several laboratories during the afternoon to understand their research, and is followed by a social event. 
• Research2Innovation is a three-day programme explores the value of entrepreneurial thinking as (1) a means of developing careers and research of leading graduate students, post-docs and faculty; and (2), advancing the research, innovations and ideas into impacts, whether that be scientific, economic, social, cultural or environmental. It will inspire academic researchers to become innovators, and provide a pipeline of teams for the Lab2Market program. 
• The Ready2Launch Accelerator helps graduate research teams emerging from Lab2Market and other programs to accelerate their growth in building viable, sustainable, innovation-driven ventures. It will empower entrepreneurial scientists and engineers to build successful companies, helping reduce the time and money needed to prove-out the technology, build the team, find experts, and attract capital. It will also support early-stage health technology companies to validate their need-based solutions directly in the hospital setting with clinicians, business experts, and innovative thinkers. Teams will receive up to 10,000 for the 2 to 3 months. The program will have three key components: (1) customer problem; (2) product value; and (3) overall economics. There will be a one hour “board meeting” every month.  Paola Baneras will be leading Ready2Launch.

Important Dates

Application Deadline: June 30, 2020 at 11:59 PM AST
Kick-off workshop: September 21 - 24, 2020
Program Wrap-up: November 5 - 6, 2020

Contact Information

Additional information can be found at the Lab2Market website. Questions can be directed to Spencer Giffin (Spencer.Giffin@dal.ca) or Dr. Michael Carew (mwcarew@dal.ca) or 902-293-4533.