Dasun Priyankara

🚀 Schulich Startups Funding News QEA Tech, a Schulich Startups portfolio company, has officially launched operations in Japan 🎉 Partnering with Drone Frontier, the team conducted a cutting-edge building envelope energy audit at the iconic Tokyo National Museum — a landmark project preserving over 150 years of history. By combining AI-powered insights with drone technology, QEA Tech is helping accelerate global sustainability and decarbonization efforts. 👏 Congratulations to the entire team on this incredible milestone! 🔗 Read more about the project: https://lnkd.in/gZwKsw9S #SchulichInTheNews #QEATechGoesGlobal #Innovation #Sustainability

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At the Vancouver Web Summit, I had the privilege of meeting with leaders from Takenaka, one of Japan’s oldest and most revered architectural, engineering, and construction companies. What began as a focused conversation around potential collaboration quickly turned into something futuristic. They were already imagining a future where ARKI APIs could feed drawing instructions directly to construction robots. Takenaka plays in a different league. The scale, vision, and technical depth they operate with is genuinely inspiring. It’s a reminder that when you structure design knowledge well, it opens doors far beyond what you build for. #AEC #ARKI #websummit #Vancouver #preconstruction

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UBTECH Robotics (9880.HK) has developed robots that autonomously navigate to battery stations within factories to swap their power cells—eliminating even the need to pause for charging. Once the battery is replaced, they immediately return to work. In China, it’s not just humans—even robots are swept into this relentless grind of competition. Once purchased, there’s no luxury of stopping to recharge. The labor never ends.

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🎙️ New Interview: From Engineer to CTO — A Conversation with Audrey Troutt of Tomo In this episode of "Learn the Technology", I sit down with Audrey Troutt, CTO at Tomo, to talk about her journey from writing code to leading high-performing teams and building a platform that’s modernizing the mortgage experience. We cover: 🔹 Tomo’s approach to automation and customer experience 🔹 Leading remote teams and building culture 🔹 The evolution of engineering leadership 🔹 Advice for aspiring tech leaders and engineers 🔹 The role of AI in both tech and art 💡 Teaser Clip: When asked about the biggest mindset shift in moving from IC to leadership, Audrey reflected on the challenge of stepping back from hands-on work — and how growth often comes from letting go. 🎧 Watch the full interview here: https://lnkd.in/eaG7SPsr #TechLeadership #WomenInTech #CTO #EngineeringCulture #StartupLife #AI #ProductDevelopment #LearnTheTechnologyWithBK

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Innovation Week at SFU marked a special milestone—celebrating 10 years of science-based entrepreneurship through the Invention to Innovation (i2I) Graduate Certificate program. Over the past decade, i2I has empowered scientists, researchers, and innovators to transform their discoveries into ventures that drive real-world impact. The program’s graduates and participants have launched deep-tech start-ups, advanced clean energy initiatives, and developed solutions that are shaping industries across Canada and beyond. What began as a pilot program has evolved into a cornerstone of SFU’s innovation ecosystem, fostering collaboration between science and business and helping bridge the gap between research and commercialization. Congratulations to the i2I community, alumni, and partners on this milestone, and here’s to the next decade of science-driven innovation! Read more about the celebration and impact here: https://lnkd.in/gxUvWSwG

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Eva and I are thrilled to share some exciting news! We are making a $2 million donation to the University of Toronto, our alma mater, to launch the Eva and Allen Lau Commercialization Catalyst Prize for Computing and Engineering Innovation. And the best part: U of T’s Faculty of Arts and Science and Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering will match our gift, doubling its impact. This prize will help researchers move their inventions from the lab to impactful companies. Each year, one team from Arts and Science and one from Engineering will receive support to bridge the critical gap between breakthrough ideas and scalable ventures. Canada has world class talent in fields like semiconductors, AI, robotics, and quantum technologies. Our hope is that this prize will spark more than just a few startups. We want it to inspire a movement, creating the conditions where many more homegrown tech giants can start, grow, and scale right here in Canada. That is why it is called Catalyst. This is personal for us. U of T gave us our start. Today, we are paying it forward. 👉 Read more on our blog in the comments.

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Canada and Korea’s tech ecosystems are getting more connected. YSpace, York University, has signed new agreements with the Korea Business Angels Association and the Seoul AI Hub to support Korean startups entering Canada and help Canadian founders expand into Asia. With more than 1,400 companies in its network, YSpace is creating structured global pathways for research commercialization, capital access, and international growth

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Episode 11 of the Summer Coworking Chronicles takes us to MassRobotics, Part 1.. We caught up with... -The Co-Founder of MassRobotics, Joyce Sidopoulos -Brian Hart, Co-Founder & CEO at Black-I Robotics, Inc. -Xinyu Wang, Co-Founder & CTO at Mito Robotics -Colleen Cronin Anderson from MassRobotics on this segment… Joyce Sidopoulos Sidopoulous, Co-Founder & Chief of Operations at MassRobotics shares.. MassRobotics is building the world’s largest innovation center for robotics. It's THE hub that people from all over the world come to because it’s where innovation in robotics happens Joyce loves the community! It’s filled with innovators, mentors who want to give back, and successful robotics companies & CEOs who return to collaborate. 👀 What should we be watching? 👀 Joyce is seeing startups in the warehouse & logistics space. There's also been a surge in healthtech, agriculture, and construction. Brian Hart, Co-Founder & CEO at Black-I Robotics, Inc. shares.. His team is building a robot worker that can move around a warehouse, pick up heavy boxes, and create a mixed case palette in real time. Their robot can put together a full mixed palette of 100 items and get it to a loading dock in ~18 minutes. Brian has built robotics companies in the Boston area for almost 20 years and leverages its ecosystem. At MassRobotics he’s been able to share information with companies using similar technology (but non-competitive) like vision systems, custom grippers, etc. 👀 What startups should we be watching? 👀 On the consumer side, look at Nutra Spin. It’s a smoothie in a can without the mess In robotics, check out Luminous Robotics, which is picking up solar voltaic rays and building solar farms with robots. Xinyu Wang, Co-Founder & CTO at Mito Robotics shares.. They're building an AI-powered intelligent robot for lab automation, focusing on cell culture. Cell culture is a manual task that's repetitive and takes up a lot of scientists times, freeing them up to focus on discovery work. Boston is the heart of both robotics and biotech, which the Mito Robotics team loves! What startups should we be watching? ReviMo is building an autonomous wheelchair. Elderly care and human support is a great use case for robotics and Aleksandr's work is worth people’s attention! Colleen Cronin Anderson at MassRobotics shares.. Colleen is responsible for building the community together and putting on events to make more connections. Their biggest event is coming up September 27th…The Robot Block Party in the Seaport. There will be tons of robots, interactive exhibits, and a robot parade! Be there!! 👀 What startups should we be watching? 👀 1.) Luminous Robotics recently was awarded a huge contract with the Australian government. 2.) Cleo Robotics just announced their new DD1 drone. Two exciting announcements (and startups) to share! The summer tour continues with MGMT Boston. Thanks to Rho and Will Panarello for supporting this series!

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📣 NEW international partnership puts #UofTEngineering at the forefront of AI-powered manufacturing. 🔗 https://uofteng.ca/p4n1bk U of T Engineering is now home to AI in Manufacturing (AIM) — a new research centre created in partnership with top South Korean institutions. It’s one of eight Global Industrial Technology Cooperation Centers (GITCC) worldwide, and the only one in Canada. 🇨🇦 Led by Professor Chi-Guhn Lee (MIE), with co-directors Professors Chul B Park (MIE), Yu Sun (MIE), and Seungjae Lee (CivMin), the centre will apply AI and optimization across the full manufacturing value chain — from material synthesis to real-time system control. 💬 “The research teams involved in this new centre have expertise in everything from material synthesis and manufacturing to data analytics and AI,” says Lee. “This enables us to cover all stages of the manufacturing value chain — from raw materials all the way through to quality control.” 📖 Read the full story at the link above. 📸 On July 28, officials from Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology (KIAT), KETI(Korea Electronics Technology Institute), and KATECH (Korea Automotive Technology Institute) visited University of Toronto Engineering to mark the opening and discuss future collaboration. #AIinManufacturing #EngineeringInnovation #GlobalResearch #UofT #SouthKorea #Manufacturing #Industry #Engineering #AI #technews

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Big news for Canadian innovation: Two Vancouver startups have been named to the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Technology Pioneers list. The prestigious list highlights 100 early to growth-stage companies from around the world that are reshaping industries—from energy to AI to healthcare. Among them are: 🔹 Ideon Technologies – A TRIUMF spinout using cosmic-ray muon tomography (yes, cosmic rays from supernovas!) to detect critical minerals deep underground, reducing the environmental impact of mining. 🔹 Miru – A smart glass startup pushing the boundaries of electrochromic window technology, with applications from buildings to next-gen sunroofs. Both represent Canada’s deep talent in deep tech—and the growing influence of Vancouver as a hub for world-class innovation. #WEF #TechPioneers #CanadianInnovation #VancouverTech #DeepTech #CriticalMinerals #SmartGlass #ClimateTech #InnovationLeadership #TechForGood https://lnkd.in/gU9nFVjf

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