Health + Medical Innovation

Nuzhat Tam-Zaman is an experienced entrepreneur with a Ph.D. from University of Alberta in Pharmaceuticals Sciences, and a demonstrated history of working in the Pharmaceutical industry. Strong business development professional, skilled in both Pharmaceutical and Natural Health Products development, Cannabis research, Regulatory Affairs, Biotechnology and Sales and Marketing of Natural Health Products in export markets. She is a Co-Chair of BioAlberta and JWG or Joint Working Group; an association between Canada and Bangladesh to increase bi-lateral trade, and Chair of Deep Tech Canada Steering Committee. She is also the scientific advisory board member of a cannabis company in Canada. She’s also a recipient of BioAlberta’s Scientific Achievement and Innovation award in 2011. She spoke in numerous International Conferences and has a patent and published refereed articles.

Diana Royce is Executive Director of the NanoMedicines Innovation Network (NMIN), one of Canada's federal Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) headquartered at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Royce has been with NMIN since its launch in early 2019 and is a member of the Deep Tech in Health + Medical Innovation Steering Committee. She previously served as Executive Director of HEALNet NCE (1998-2002), and AllerGen NCE (2004-2019; President & CEO since 2019), and is President of The Deerfield Group Inc. She began her career as a Senior Policy Advisor in University Finance with the government of Ontario. She has received numerous awards for her facilitation of cross-sectoral research partnerships and serves on a number of not-for-profit boards. Dr. Royce holds a Doctorate from the University of Toronto (EdD), an MA from Queen’s University, and an HBA from the University of Waterloo.

Sushanta Mitra is a full Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Mechatronics Engineering and is cross-appointed as a Professor of Chemical Engineering, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Physics & Astronomy, and Chemistry at the University of Waterloo. He serves as the Executive Director of Canada’s largest nanotechnology institute – the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN). Before joining Waterloo, he had several administrative roles in Canadian higher education, including Department Chair (Lassonde School of Engineering), Associate Vice-President Research (York University) and Assistant Vice-President Research (University of Alberta). He also served as the President of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering. For his contributions to science and engineering, he has been elected a fellow of several professional organizations, including the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a foreign fellow of both the Indian National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences India. He has an entrepreneurial mind, being the Founder & CEO of a Canadian startup, Aquabits Inc. (on quantum computing) and a Dutch startup, SLE Enterprises B.V. (on ultra-fast encapsulation technology), supported by Waterloo.

Danina Kapetanovic is the Chief Innovation Officer at the Integrated Health and Social Services University Network for West-Central Montreal (CIUSSS West-Central Montreal). The network, consisting of 34 facilities covering the entire continuum of care, provides timely and person-centric care to over 700,00 people annually. Within the CIUSSS and its hub, Jewish General Hospital, she conceptualised, founded and now heads the Connected Health Innovation Hub – OROT (https://orot-jgh.org/). OROT has a mandate to guide the way to the new era of care – a future in which health will be created, managed, and restored wherever the patient is (strategy known as Care Everywhere). OROT identifies opportunities, inspires, and accelerates innovation in connected health by bringing together clinicians and end users with entrepreneurs and innovators in order to build and launch new technologies that improve people’s lives. Since its inception in 2020, the hub has co-developed and helped integrate dozens of solutions which have been instrumental in addressing some of the most pressing issues such as the access to care and human resources shortage. Before joining the CIUSSS West-Central Montreal, Ms. Kapetanovic served as Executive Director of Hacking Health, a global, grass-roots network of innovators committed to creating digital health solutions to benefit citizens, support healthcare systems, and promote economic activity. This network organized 160 hackathons in 63 cities around the world, leading to more than 1,500 innovative projects. Previous to that, Ms. Kapetanovic served with the United Nations for close to two decades where she held various leadership positions, spearheading innovation and public-private partnerships resulting in positive and impactful change across the globe. Among her proudest accomplishments is the creation of community care centers across Northern Iraq; development and roll out of a global food assistance strategy targeting pregnant and lactating mothers and children under two, and the establishment of public-private partnership which resulted in creation of specialised food products for treatment of acute and prevention of chronic malnutrition. Ms. Kapetanovic holds a M.Sc. in Communication Sciences and Disorders from Hunter College of City University of New York, a B.A. Honours in Neurolinguistics from McGill University in Montreal, a certificate in Healthcare Innovation from Duke University and a certificate in Development of Entrepreneurship in Life Sciences and Healthcare Technology from Concordia University. She speaks five languages.

As Team Lead of the Biomedical Nanotechnologies team at the Quantum and Nanotechnologies Research Center (QN) at the National Research Council (NRC), Dr. Kulka leads a multidisciplinary team of researchers, working with both industry and academic partners to build therapeutic and diagnostic platform technologies focused on human disease. She has a PhD in medical sciences and cell biology with a focus on immunology. Her current research objective is to develop complex nanomaterials to manipulate and interrogate complex biological systems, with emphasis on inflammatory disease. Their focus includes the development of complex materials for 3D bioprinting, drug delivery and enrichment of cell products.