In the last year, XPrize’s Canada hub, located at the University of Calgary, has set the groundwork for boosting the country’s innovation economy.
Last May, XPrize announced its first international hub, which landed at UCalgary. In its first year of operation, the hub has been connecting with the broader Calgary community while opening new fellowship and internship opportunities for students.
The company runs large-scale innovation challenges, which often last for years and have millions of dollars at play. Sarah McCullough, the National Director of the XPrize Canada Hub, said that as the first regional hub, her team works on locally developed, managed, and funded projects that impact a specific region.
“There’s global challenges with global participants. Regional hubs will find the right competitors at the right time for the right XPrize challenge and try to help them with resources as they go through competitions,” she told LWC.
“Ultimately, hubs help support deployment and scale. At the end of the challenge, even though there’s a solution that might be ready for market or deployment, it doesn’t always have a clear pathway in the region. That’s our primary role.”
For the hub, which runs out of the Hunter Hub at UCalgary, this first year has been all about foundation building. Currently, the company employs a team of three.
“I joined in August as the first director. We had an operations team member join in January and she actually comes from the university, so she’s been integral in helping me understand what it’s like to operate within the university as I’m brand new to academia,” McCullough said.
“We just hired a program manager who started last week. We’re also really excited that we’re bringing on a couple of part-time summer students to help with some automations, workflows and our social media content, so we can get a bit of regular cadence.”
Hub fellowship and internship programs are currently designed for postdoctoral and graduate students and supported by a financial scholarship that is milestone-based, ranging from $5,000 – $10,000 CAD for fellowships and $5,000 – $6,000 CAD for internships, according to the hub’s website.
“Fellowships and internships are flexible part-time commitments offered in 3 to 6-month increments (placement dependent) as a project-based, consultant-style role. Fellows and interns are Canadian-based and operate in a remote/hybrid capacity,” the site reads.
The first three interns will be hired soon, McCullough said.
“Those positions are more focused on graduate students and we’ve been working closely with the faculty of graduate studies to understand what an attractive opportunity would look like,” she said.
“Those will be project-based, four-month part-time opportunities where somebody might get to come in and do an analysis of ‘What is the impact of an innovation challenge, and how do we leverage some of that data and information forward?’ They might actually help shape future prize designs as well as innovation challenges.”
Designing the programs and connecting with recruitment channels has been a top priority these past few months, McCullough said, adding that the hub is hoping for six internship positions this fall, which will be open to individuals across Calgary.
XPrize making itself at home
Brad Parry, Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund (OCIF)’s CEO and Calgary Economic Development (CED)’s President and CEO, is not surprised that XPrize is fitting in well in the city.
He said that not only does Calgary have a large amount of talent, but those in neighbouring cities and provinces want to come and join the city’s entrepreneurial community. Before last year’s announcement, XPrize was awarded an OCIF Investment.
“For them (XPrize), it was a natural fit. I met with them a couple of years ago, even before the investment, having a chat about what they were looking for,” he told LWC.
“For the XPrize team, making sure that the community gets behind these projects is a big deal. When they came here, we worked with them, we introduced them, we spent time with the university, and they came away really, really impressed with how we work as a community to drive innovation in some of these key areas.”
McCullough, who is originally from Winnipeg, said that her time since joining the hub has been her first time living in Calgary, but she’s far from a stranger to the city.
“In past roles, I often found myself collaborating with my Calgary colleagues and I started asking them what was going on there. It really seemed like Calgary was making some really interesting investments and there’s a lot of activity in the ecosystem,” she said.
“When I heard the XPrize Canada hub was going to happen in Calgary, I had to know more, because I absolutely knew XPrize in the model, and I really think it can add a lot of value in the Canadian economy.”
McCullough was not surprised that Calgary, as a city, wanted to house the first Canadian hub.
