In this position, Gilchrist conducts research that will hopefully improve the outcomes of patients in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) where the sickest newborns are treated.

He works with an interdisciplinary team that is responsible for the development of a Clinical Data Repository (CDR) that can efficiently collect and store clinical data from multiple systems, located in different departments of the hospital, in real-time, while maintaining patient privacy. As well, the team is using more accurate models, developed from the CDR data, to estimate the risk of certain kinds of medical conditions of newborn babies.

Says Gilchrist:  “I love the fact that I get to work on research that gains valuable insight from patients who are actually there in the hospital that I can see and get feedback from in real-time. This research should lead to a practical system that can be put in place where patients can benefit from the results in real-time while there are being treated and monitored in the NICU.”

Gilchrist points out that the research he conducted at Carleton for his PhD thesis was the foundation for his future research career at CHEO. “The years I spent at CHEO working on my PhD allowed me to build working relationships with many people at the hospital which made it much easier to continue after I graduated.”

The alumnus says he chose to do his PhD at Carleton because of the opportunities to work directly with medical professionals on real problems through the research group of his PhD supervisor Dr. Monique Frize.

Gilchrist emphasizes the importance of networking for graduate students when they are looking for a job. “Many opportunities are not posted, so keep in touch with your friends and colleagues, and try to network as much as possible. Your next opportunity may be only a conversation away.  Don’t be afraid to approach organizations and let them know what you are able to offer.”

Today, Gilchrist is also an Adjunct Research Professor at Carleton, where he co-supervises two graduate students with Dr. Frize. The students are also involved in doing research at CHEO. He has also created a professional photography business.

In 2008, Gilchrist made international news as part of a team that discovered the then largest known prime number.  In January 2013, the same team discovered an even larger prime number that is currently the new record. It has 17.4 million digits.

Ian Johnston has decided to use his architecture degree from Carleton in a different way.

Instead of designing buildings, the alumnus has pursued his love of art and teaching over the last 20 years – and as a result, has won numerous awards and recognition for his work.

“I think I can certainly attribute (my success) to the broad foundation Carleton gave me,” says Johnston, who graduated from Carleton’s Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism in 1990. “But I’d also say it’s been my obsession and being driven – which I think was also encouraged at Carleton.”

Johnston – who is currently based in Nelson, British Columbia – is currently showing his art work in an exhibit called Reinventing Consumption in western Canada. The exhibit will travel across the country to different art galleries throughout the next couple years.

His three-part installation Reinventing Consumption looks at the massive scale of consumer goods manufacturing today, and includes an inflating and deflating piece that covers and reveals a mass of household items diverted from a waste stream in Medicine Hat, Alberta.

Drawing on his architecture background at Carleton to create his work, he often develops ceramic large-scale installations.

He says he always wanted a career where he could work with his hands, but also developed a passion for teaching when he attended Carleton.

He decided to enrol in the School of Architecture and Urbanism – completing the program in five years.

“For young people, there’s definitely an interest in architecture,” Johnston says. “It’s a very, very intense program . . . and I felt compelled to finish it.”

He adds that the program also inspired him to go into teaching, and help students balance life with their studies.

After Johnston graduated, he spent five years working at the Bauhaus Academy in post-Berlin Wall East Germany – developing and facilitating a series of workshops about urban renewal with two other architects.

From 1995 to 2006, Johnston also spent time teaching in the three-year craft diploma program at the Kootenay School of the Arts in Nelson.

In 1996, he opened his own studio in Nelson and says he started creating smaller objects at the beginning of his artistic career. He went on to work on much larger pieces as time went on.

“At first, I resisted getting involved in large, complex and convoluted projects,” Johnston says. “But the further I went, the more I drew on my architecture background and experience.”

In addition to his current cross-country exhibit, he has shown his art work all over Canada – including at Museum London, Surrey Art Gallery, Kelowna Art Gallery, Richmond Art Gallery and Langham Cultural Centre.

Over the years, he has also received numerous grants and awards for his work including from the B.C. Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts.

Johnston says his architecture degree has become invaluable throughout his career – whether he’s teaching art, or creating it.

“The architecture program at Carleton gave me both of these skills,” he says. “And Carleton helped hone these desires. I wouldn’t be able to do it without my architecture background.”

It all started at Startup Weekend Ottawa, an event that brings together entrepreneurs and their ideas. In the weeks leading up to the event, Tannahill fused the two things he likes most into a workable idea, he says.

“I like tattoos and I like doing tech, so the combination sort of came together,” he says. “It wasn’t my life’s goal to start a website about tattooing, but it worked out that there’s a real need for it.”

This need was demonstrated by his first place finish at Startup Weekend. After the event, Tannahill joined forces with two other entrepreneurs, including Carleton alumnus and designer Minh Dao.

After months of work, Tattoo Hero recently launched at the International Startup Festival in Montreal. The team hoped the reveal would generate some buzz around the website, Tannahill says.

Instead, Tattoo Hero was covered by TechCrunch, a popular website within the IT community. This exposure has brought thousands of unique visitors to the site every day, Tannahill says.

“(Tech Crunch) is something that we wanted down the road,” says Minh Dao, the website’s designer.  “To have that on the first day that we launched – it couldn’t have gone any better.”

As of now, Tattoo Hero makes finding an artist easier for people who aren’t linked into the tattoo community, Tannahill says. Because some great artists can work solely on referrals, they simply don’t have a need to build a good website to attract new clients, he says.

Tattoo Hero is working towards bringing these artists to the forefront and “doing the work for them,” he says. In the future, this will develop into bringing in a scheduling system operated through the website to allow people to book appointments with artists online, Tannahill says.

Carleton has prepared both Tannahill and Dao for the challenges of running a business.

“Being a software engineer, it’s given me good insight into the theories around software structure,” Tannahill says.

“My other two partners aren’t very tech savvy, and I’ll try to explain some things to them, and they just don’t get it. So I definitely learned something in school,” he laughed.

As the person in charge of branding and design, Dao also feels as though Carleton has prepared him for some of the challenges associated with running a website. He says one of the strengths of Carleton’s Industrial Design program is that it’s well known for producing well-rounded students.

“What Carleton Industrial Design does is give you a good broad spectrum of skills and knowledge – not just on design, but on marketing, on engineering, on psychology,” he says.

Even though Tattoo Hero only launched recently, the team is already proud of what they’ve done.

“We’ve created something that we all believe in,” Dao says.

Visit the Tattoo Hero website at tattoohero.com

Mackenzie and McGillvray knew the market for server space at data centres was set to skyrocket as remote or “cloud” computing became big business. Data centres allow companies to have access to a safe and fully serviced location for all of their computer equipment. They brought in Van Gaal, a talented designer of data centres who has worked with Telus and others. The three went to work designing the Ottawa facility and raising the $15 million in capital it would take to build it.

McGillvray credits Van Gaal’s foresight in planning the centre. The location in Kanata gives it access to more than 144 strands of fibre optic cable, allowing for nearly unlimited bandwidth. Two separate electrical grids feed into the building, ensuring continuity of services during a power failure. As well, the building will have a number of security features to safeguard its clients’ data.

In July 2013, Granite Networks received an investment from local IT services firm Grade A.

“Grade A saw an opportunity with our organization to better serve their client base and become involved with a rapidly growing organization, (in) a parallel industry to what they’re presently in,” said van Gaal.

With files from Ottawa Citizen and Ottawa Business Journal.

D’Elia and Graham founded superkül in 2002 in Toronot and count among their project +HOUSE, Newmarket Community Centre, SPLIT House and SHIFT Cottage.

D’Elia is a registered architect with the Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) and a member of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. He is a member of the Toronto Community Housing Design Review Panel, and an OAA mentor. His areas of expertise include sustainable design, construction detailing and sequencing and the redevelopment of heritage and existing properties at all scales.

From Kelvin Browne | National Post (Canada) | July 6, 2013

“I think people are attracted to our houses because they sense they can be comfortable there, not just because they like the look of them,” says Meg. Indeed, surfing through their portfolio, the houses are sleek, somewhat minimal and yet definitely not unfriendly. Andre points out this is not accidental. “We like a certain modesty; we focus on light, the materials and proportions. Great proportions are essential.” Elegant proportions are indeed super cool. No amount of marble and fancy fixtures can redeem a space that begins with the handicap of thoughtless proportions.

Superkül has been in business for 11 years. They now have a firm of 15, including them. In addition to award-winning houses, the firm has designed the Fielding Estate Winery, the head office for St. Joseph and other commercial projects.

Andre says: “Our clients are typically very busy people, but when it comes to the design of their house they’ll make time to understand all the details.”

Andre adds, importantly, “You’re realizing someone’s dream for them, it’s a big financial commitment, but it has to be enjoyable, fun too, or it’s not going to work out.”

A co-founding partner in Fernando Hale & Chang LLP, Ron translated his engineering background into a thriving practice focused on patent procurement, technology licensing, IP due diligence studies, and strategic IP portfolio management. His clientele are engaged in a variety of technologies including consumer electronics, medical devices, software, mobile communication systems, alternative energy, e-commerce, imaging and quantum computing.

While at Carleton, Fernando received a Senate Medal for Electrical Engineering and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council scholarship for graduate research.

JAMES BAGNALL, OTTAWA CITIZEN

The usual progression for a startup is to raise a little seed money from family and friends, move on to angel investors, then tap venture capital. But that’s not the route picked by Graphite Software, a Kanata startup less than a year old. It was to announce on June 19, 2013, that it has landed $4.4 million in venture financing. The deal values the startup at somewhere between $9 million and $12 million.

“We went directly to the series A round,” says Alec Main, a co-founder, in reference to the first tranche of venture capital. Kanata-based Celtic House Venture Partners is supplying the money, which will be used to further develop Graphite Software’s core product. The company’s software establishes multiple secure spaces on smartphones and tablets, with each domain offering varying levels of security depending on the importance of the data or application. A key target is the Android market.

It helps that Main and at least two co-founders —- Paul Litva and Ron Vandergeest — were part of the team that built Cloakware. This was the Kanata software security firm acquired in 2007 by Netherlands-based Irdeto for $72.5 million U.S. Cloakware’s technology transforms source code to prevent tampering or copying of digital content such as movies or music. At the time of its purchase, Cloakware’s software was embedded in one billion electronic devices, from mobile phones to media players. Most famously, movie-streaming firm Netflix purchased the software in 2010 to protect its system from hackers.

Cloakware’s venture investors walked away with the majority of the proceeds from the Irdeto sale, earning anywhere between three and six times what they put in. Cloakware’s founders and early employees also did reasonably well.

Retirement, though, seemed out of the question. Main worked for Irdeto for eight months, then accepted a job offer from Nagravision, a Swiss outfit that builds secure systems for delivering content. By mid-2012, however, Main was restless to return to Canada. He also missed the excitement of working in a technology hub.

He discovered former colleagues were also eager to launch another startup. Paul Litva and Ron Vandergeest both resigned from Irdeto late last fall to lay the groundwork for Graphite Software. There’s a fourth founder who has agreed to play the role of CEO but can’t yet be identified because he or she is currently at another firm.

In the past few months, Graphite Software has added several top developers with a particular talent in Android technology — the software that drives the bestselling smartphones built by Samsung. Dmitri Federov, for instance, helped Irdeto develop components to allow corporations to manage Android mobile devices remotely. Since March, he has been Graphite’s software architect. James Puderer is the startup’s principal Android developer.

Graphite Software — the name is meant to signify the modern, lightweight and strong quality of the composite — aims to solve a couple of important problems in a very elegant way. The first is to make Android devices safe for downloading apps. The second is to give corporations a way of including the ubiquitous Android phones in their networks without compromising security.

Teron is the founder of Teron International Building Technologies and is known as the “Father of Kanata” for his influence in shaping and building the west-end neighbourhood in Ottawa. He is responsible for two suburban developments in the Ottawa area – the development of the former hamlet of Bells Corners, Ont. into a garden suburb (through the development of housing estates called Lynwood Park and Arbeatha Park in the early 1960s) – and the development of Beaverbrook, the beginning of the city of Kanata (later amalgamated into greater Ottawa) from a greenfield site in the Township of March, west of the Ottawa greenbelt.

From 1973 to 1979, he was the chairman and president of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). He has been active in the community through his work with the National Arts Centre, Canadian Housing Design Council, the Ottawa General Hospital and the African Students’ Foundation.

He is an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 1978, he was made an honorary Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. He has won three national and four regional awards for housing from the Canadian Housing Design Council. He has also received the Queen Elizabeth ll Silver, Golden and Diamond Jubilee medals.

Teron is a generous supporter of architecture at Carleton. Through a gift from the Teron Foundation in 2007, the Teron Scholars program at Carleton is able to challenge students to push their creative and technical boundaries to be leading Canadian architects.

He published this June 4, 2013.

Having just completed 50 years in the computer industry ( I joined Digital Equipment Corporation on March 21, 1963), I would like to reflect upon some of the major advances in the industry during that period and to speculate on those that we might witness in the next 50 years.

As for the past, by far the greatest advances have been in the cost and size of computer memory. In 1963, Digital sold a computer called the PDP-5 which was unique in that it used both core memory (4096 words of 12 bits each) and transistors (500,000 bits per second clock rate) as opposed to drums and vacuum tubes. Additional memory could be obtained by ordering a “Memory Extension Unit” for $10,000 and 4096 word blocks of memory at $10,000 each – all in 1963 dollars.

Incidentally, the term PDP stood for Programmable Data Processor because the purchase of computers came under the jurisdiction of “someone in accounting” who was convinced that only IBM knew how to make computers and so Digital had to convince him or her that we were selling something other than computers. And the accountants took us at our word. They bought tens of thousands of them over the years at a typical system price of $30,000.

The early computers were not really used for computing at all, but for controlling and monitoring the thousands of digital devices that were coming on the market at the time –things like analog-to-digital converters, digital-to-analog converters, and digital telephone switches. The early computer research work was aimed at military applications such as ballistic calculations and code deciphering, but those applications were soon dwarfed by office automation ( word processors of the type I am using to produce this document) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. The computers still did some computing, but they were being used more and more as network controllers.

As for the future, two application areas stand out as no-brainers – medical and homeland security. In the medical field, can you imagine two doctors in the year 2060 telling a group of recent graduates about how they used to perform colonoscopies using a sophisticated garden hose instead of a system based on the use of a robot that is swallowed by the patient? The technology for such a device is available today and the computer industry should be ashamed of itself if it does not make it happen within the next decade.

Another obvious medical application is the elimination of hearing aid batteries. Self-winding watches first came onto the market about 70 years ago and it seems odd that the movement of one’s head cannot be used to operate a miniature voltage generator mounted in the ear. With all of the reports that have been written on the wonderful things that nanotechnology is going to do for us, it is surprising not to see a mention of this application.

The mother of all markets for computers during the next 50 years will be the security market, and more specifically, what the Americans refer to as the homeland security market. It is becoming more and more obvious that in order to detect someone who is planning on blowing up an airplane, we must find out what thoughts are in the assailant’s mind and not just what is in their luggage. The January issue of Maclean’s magazine carried an article entitled “Mind Games” which described a system that employs a head band to intercept a person’s brain waves and uses the resultant signal to control devices like smart phones. As unattractive as it might be to wear a headband as we wander around airports, the terrorism problem has reached the point where society is willing to wear just about anything in just about any environment.

The computer industry has served society well during the last 50 years. Even though today’s problems are much more complex than those of years gone by, the business opportunities are much greater.