Connecting the Dots Through the Ontario Neuroscience Asset Map

The Ontario Brain Institute (OBI) seeks to mobilize Ontario as a world leader in brain discovery, commercialization and care. This means creating opportunities and resources for groups to work together in news ways. One such resource is the Neuroscience Asset Map - a dynamic tool that allows users ranging from patients, researchers, companies, and not-for-profit organizations to discover and connect with neuroscience resources across Ontario. Through this, OBI hopes to facilitate interactions among these groups to catalyze opportunities for collaboration. Launched in September 2013, the Neuroscience Asset Map has captured over 800 neuroscience researchers, 130 brain-related companies, and 100 institutions involved in neuroscience in Ontario to date. OBI plans to continually evolve this tool and would like to engage the KTECoP for discussion and feedback on possible directions.

SPEAKERS

Kirk Nylen, PhD
Kirk is the Director of Outreach at the Ontario Brain Institute. In this role he leads the development and implementation of OBI’s communications and knowledge exchange initiatives. He serves as Vice-Chair on the Board of Epilepsy Ontario, Chairs the provincial knowledge translation working group of the Epilepsy Implementation Task Force, and is a member of the Ontario SPOR Support Unit working group on knowledge translation. Kirk received his PhD from the University of Toronto, Department of Pharmacology where he currently holds an adjunct appointment.

Lucas Ng
Lucas joined the OBI in January 2012 as an intern and is now the Program Officer of Industry Relations. He is on the team responsible for OBI’s NeuroTech Ontario cluster initiative, funded by FedDev Ontario, where partnerships between various hospitals, universities, academic institutions and industry companies collaborate to accelerate the commercialization of neurotechnologies. In addition, he leads the initiative for the development of the Neuroscience Asset Map, a database that allows researchers, companies and institutions to discover and connect with neuroscience resources across Ontario.

Previously, Lucas was a Teaching Assistant at the University of Toronto for introductory life sciences courses and was also a volunteer at an organic synthesis lab. He completed a double major in Neuroscience and Biochemistry at the University of Toronto.

Shiva Amiri, PhD
Shiva is the Manager of Informatics and Analytics at the Ontario Brain Institute where she manages Brain-CODE, a large-scale bioinformatics platform that stores and manages multiple data types from cutting edge neuroscience projects across Ontario. Previously, she was the Team Lead for UK’s Science and Innovation Network in Canada. Her role was facilitating collaborations, scientific diplomacy and exchanging best practices between UK and Canadian research, innovation and science policy. She is also the President and CEO of Modecular Inc., a Computational Biochemistry start-up company for next generation drug screening methodologies.

Shiva completed her D.Phil. (Ph.D.) in Computational Biochemistry at the University of Oxford where she focused her work on computational studies of membrane proteins involved in neuronal diseases. Shiva is involved with several organisations including Let’s Talk Science and the Canadian Science Policy Conference.