annual report 2001 - Killam Trusts

Trustees learned first hand that at least one Killam Scholar at
the MNI is reaching out to the world beyond the university.
Dr. C. J. Thompson, who is involved with instrumentation for
positron emission tomography (PET), recently designed and
tested a new technique for shielding PET scanners like the one
at the MNI. Dr. Thompson has decided to commercialize this
concept, under the name “NeuroShield”, which has now been
registered as a trademark. He has formed a company, “Scanwell
Systems”, to build and sell these devices, has applied for a
patent, and has sold four so far.
As we learned from Dr. Evans’ lecture, commercialization of
intellectual property will more and more be the norm for
many researchers, who up until now have often confined their
activities to the university laboratory bench. As Dr. Evans
noted, moving in this direction is not only good for Canada’s
economic future, but also goes a long way toward fulfilling
our Canadian universities’ obligation under the “Public Research
Contract” to give something tangible back to society,
in exchange for the large and growing amounts of public
monies which are annually invested in their research activities.
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