|
Basic research is like a box of chocolates. Physicist Bruce Balcom might not say it like that, but he would agree that you don’t always know what you’re going to get. He would add that 10 years in a lab is not long for the early development of a breakthrough technology.
Balcolm, one of UNB’s most prolific grant-getters, runs a state-of-the-art MRI lab on the leafy Fredericton campus. I toured the facility last summer and I was blown away. As the cover story by Joshua Samuel explains, Balcolm’s researchers have been working hard to find new commercial applications for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Bruce Balcolm is also a broad thinker. So when one of his post-doc fellows had a eureka moment using MRI to measure capillary pressure in rocks, they realized that the application could form the basis of a new technology for the petroleum-exploration industry. At that point, Balcolm knew exactly who he was going to call: UNB engineering graduates Jill and Derrick Green. Starting on page 34 you can read how he persuaded the husband-and-wife team to leave comfortable lives and good careers in Cleveland to come home to New Brunswick and commercialize the process.
There’s a lot of talk about expats in this issue. Peter Moreira considers the implications of the thousands of IT-related jobs that are going to be created with the regional expansion of such high-tech giants as Research In Motion and CGI, not to mention the talent needs of our own SMEs. According to Stephen Lund, more than 4,000 IT jobs are going to be created in Nova Scotia alone. Parents helping kids choose post-secondary programs should note that technically skilled graduates can practically name their price.
|
But wait. Aren’t university enrolments declining? We asked Alec Bruce to find out if that cup is half empty or half full. It turns out our universities have almost doubled foreign student enrolment since 2001, and efforts are afoot to formalize more ambitious targets. Because let’s face it, if Canada’s slice of an estimated trillion-dollar global education pie is only 2%, the sky’s the limit for the region’s education industry. What’s in it for you? Foreign students are not only a talent source in a tight labour market (and such scholars prefer applied science and business), they can link you to new export markets. Smell the coffee!
Speaking of coffee, it takes a regular intake of caffeine to keep my brain’s capillary pressure stable. In St. John’s as I write, I am now a devotee of Hava Java on Water Street. I met there a sparkplug of a guy who was enjoying time off from a drill rig near Africa with a mochaccino and the day’s papers. It’s one of the charms of an offshore-fuelled economy that you can get a socio-economic overview of another continent from the person sitting next to you at a cafe.
My acquaintance and I talked, among many things, about corporate social responsibility; what works and what doesn’t. The hour was memorable for me because
a) my perspective was broadened
b) the coffee was the best I’ve had in a while and
c) I was trying to think of a column title for our newest contributor, and I did. That person is Lara Ryan, a consultant who is known for her work with Junior Achievement over the past eight years. I asked her if she’d be interested in writing a column about corporate social responsibility for Progress. She answered that it’s really all about corporate social “opportunity”. So I know she can talk your language. Oh, and it’s called Spectrum.
Enjoy. |
