Dr. Tom Brzustowski

Biography:
Tom Brzustowski is RBC Professor in the Telfer School of Management of the University of Ottawa. He is also Chair of the Board of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo. His recent book: "The Way Ahead - Meeting Canada's Productivity Challenge" was published by the University of Ottawa Press in 2008.
Dr. Brzustowski was President of NSERC from 1995 to 2005. A registered professional engineer (P.Eng.), Brzustowski taught mechanical engineering at Waterloo from 1962 to 1987, and also served as Vice-President, Academic of the University from 1975 to 1987. After that he was Deputy Minister of Colleges and Universities and later of the Premier's Council in the Government of Ontario.
Tom Brzustowski is an Officer of the Order of Canada and holds honorary doctorates from numerous Canadian universities. In 2006, he was awarded the Gold Medal of Professional Engineers Ontario.

Abstract:
The commercialization of new goods and services that have their roots in university research has the potential to improve our productivity and enhance our wealth creation to a significant extent by helping move Canadian industrial production higher up on the value chain. However, in spite of growing expertise and some singular successes, it is becoming increasingly clear that to realize this potential it will be necessary to shift the focus of our S&T policy closer toward wealth creation as an explicit goal, so that commercialization might no longer be dealt with as an afterthought in the research enterprise, and its scale might be greatly expanded.
The presentation proposes some elements of a "wealth creation" S&T policy, describing what they might make possible, and how. The proposals incorporate several existing programs as the foundation, and make use of some recent findings on industrial R&D in Canada.