Research profiles

In 1989, the I.H. Asper School of Business opened The Centre for Entrepreneurship to increase awareness about entrepreneurship and its importance to the Canadian economy by reaching out to the local community through non-traditional means. In 2008, it was renamed the Stu Clark Centre, but the mandate didn’t change. Now, in 2010, The Centre has helped launch more than two dozen businesses, including one currently listed on the TSX. The Centre also runs the Curry BizCamp, which targets underprivileged youth with behavioural challenges. Using real life problems, the BizCamp builds their individual self-confidence, and provides them with options for dealing with life’s issues. More than 1,300 students have participated in the program since 1998, and the model is now being adopted in Calgary, Toronto and Ottawa, Israel, the West Bank and the Philippines.

The global food supply is a grand challenge that affects every country around the world, many of whom are developing or emerging countries that rely on foreign relief to sustain large percentages of their population. Canadian university researchers understand this challenge, and are working on long term solutions to the global food supply challenge. A partnership between the University of Manitoba and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is saving Canadian farmers millions of dollars each year. The Canadian grain industry, with an annual value of $12 billion, experiences an annual loss of about $120 million – or 10 percent – due to insect infestation. The multi-disciplinary research team has examined a variety of factors to help reduce spoilage to minimize these losses. Their discoveries have resulted in new, cost-effective and eco-friendly insecticides and more accurate methods for identifying infestation and measuring optimum moisture levels, which have recently been adopted as new international (ISO) standards for grain storage. Canadian farmers and researchers are now transferring their knowledge to farmers around the world; including China where annual crop losses due to infestation are greater than 50 percent.