Dr. Bill Hunter

President & CEO | Canary Medical Inc.

Dr. Bill Hunter has spent his career examining ways to make medical devices safer, smarter, and more effective. He has 30 years of experience in healthcare as a former practicing physician, serial medtech entrepreneur, and chief executive. Dr. Hunter is also an innovator and inventor with over 200 patents and patent applications.

His latest venture, Canary Medical, uses implanted sensor technology to enable medical devices to self-report on function, activity, wear, complications, and patient outcomes.

Previously, Dr. Hunter served as CEO of Correvio, and prior to that, he was Founder/CEO of Angiotech, a world leader in the emerging field of drug-loaded medical devices and implants.

He has been awarded with the 2006 Principal Award from the Manning Foundation (one of Canada’s highest awards for innovation); BC Innovation Council’s Cecil Green Award for Science and Technology Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneur of the Year from the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association; and Canada’s 40 Under 40. He has a BSc from McGill University and a MSc and MD degree from the University of British Columbia.

Gihan Kamel

Principal Scientist and Team Supervisor | SESAME (Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East)

Dr. Gihan Kamel is the SESAME Infrared Beamline Principal Scientist/Team Supervisor, (on leave) from the Physics Department, Faculty of Science, Helwan University, Cairo, Egypt, where she is a lecturer in biophysics.

Dr. Kamel obtained her Ph.D. in 2011 from the University of Rome, La Sapienza, Italy, and held a researcher position at the Italian INFN’s Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati from 2014 to 2015.

In 2015, she took up the position of the Infrared Beamline Scientist at SESAME. Dr Kamel is also involved in the preparatory phases for the establishment of the African Light Source (AfLS). She is noted for her lectures on science for peace and science diplomacy, as well as women in science. She was acknowledged at the International Women’s Day 2017 by the President of the Italian Republic for her engagement at SESAME. She is the joint 2020 Laureate of the Eurêka Rive Sud Prize of the French organization, amcsti.

Tom O'Neill

Professor and Director, Individual and Team Performance Lab | Department of Psychology, University of Calgary

Tom is a global research leader in the areas of high-performance teamwork, virtual team and leader effectiveness, flexible remote and hybrid work, human-autonomy teaming, conflict and conflict management, personality, and assessment. Tom has published over 75 peer-reviewed journal articles, and through consulting and speaking engagements he has translated the science of high-performance teamwork and flexible remote work into practice. He founded Work EvOHlution, which supports organizations with hybrid work. He created ITPmetrics.com, which is the leading Canadian teamwork assessment and development software platform used in post-secondary student learning teams. More than 500,000 assessments have been taken. Tom edited a book with co-authors that is coming out this fall, called The Handbook of Virtual Work.

Rashid Sumaila

University Killam Professor, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs | University of British Columbia

Rashid Sumaila is a University Killam Professor at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia. His research focuses on bioeconomics, marine ecosystem valuation, and the analysis of global issues such as fisheries subsidies, marine protected areas, illegal fishing, climate change, marine plastic pollution, and oil spills. Simply put, the whole world is Sumaila’s workplace, as he has experience working in six continents.

Dr. Sumaila received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Bergen and his B.Sc. (Quantity Surveying) from the Ahmadu Bello University. Sumaila is widely published and cited. He won the 2017 Volvo Environment Prize and was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2019. His interest in the environment started early in life, his grandfather used to say that people should, “walk as if the ground feels pain.”