From Idea to Marketplace

The development and commercialization of our scholars’ research and intellectual properties into products and services exemplify Ryerson’s mission to mobilize knowledge. Taking research outcomes from the lab bench and translating them into impactful inventions and processes help to solve current challenges and questions while giving Canada a competitive edge in the global landscape.

We’d like to highlight two such collaborations, both of which in their early stages received industrial partner funding provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada – Collaborative Research and Development Grant.

Ebrahim Bagheri (Electrical, Computer, and Biomedical Engineering) has developed semantics-enabled social media analytics that predict the churn propensity of customers by mining their social media data. Industry partner ThinkCX Technologies is commercializing this cutting-edge technology in order to create a targeted means of identifying new customers and improving retention of existing customers, particularly for telecommunications companies. 

Scott Tsai (Mechanical and Industrial Engineering) has worked jointly with global biotech company STEMCELL Technologies to develop and patent commercial kits for the purpose of coating microfluidic cells. This advance in the field of microfluidics has the potential to enhance patient outcomes during cell transplantation, a promising therapy for the treatment of diseases such as type 1 diabetes and Parkinson’s.