research and innovation : Featured Stories

A Toronto-based company wants your smartphone data, but it's not for what you think. How crowdsourcing is changing the climate of weather forecasting.

Peekapak is a new curated monthly arts and education package that brings healthier ideas about the world to today's young minds. Featuring protagonists involved in STEM fields, Peekapak challenges traditional homework and ideals. 

From music to video games, new technologies are making therapies for children with ASD more affordable and accessible. Meet the Toronto-based researchers whose innovations are helping children understand themselves—and the world around them—in new ways. 

Find out how a group of Toronto-based startups are rethinking how stores, brands, and retail floors interact with consumers. As customers become more informed shoppers, stores need to match and expand their expertise. 

In the latest in our series reporting on innovations coming out of MaRS Discovery District, we look at several cutting-edge medical advances currently in development--from revolutionary cancer treatments to personality-based patient care. 

The MaRS Discovery District's bee initiative adds its hives to the growing list of urban beekeepers using rooftops to enhance the biodiversity of Toronto's concrete jungle--and source delicious, organic, homegrown honey while they're at it.

By bridging Toronto and the Kitchener-Waterloo area, both through collaborative networks and the facilitation of a high-speed rail system, regional organizations aim to create a powerhouse of Canadian talent. 

In Toronto, finding quality child care can be a daunting and expensive affair. Arlene Francis has an answer. The single mom is gearing up to launch her own business: a platform for other moms to find qualified, pre-screened caregivers. 

Lessons from Mephis: The City of Memphis is on the rise thanks to a growing startup community, investments in bike lanes, a burgeoning arts district and people moving back to the city. Through it all, the city has listened to its residents and embraced 'lean urbanism.' 

I hear the bomb go off. I am a reporter and suddenly I am rushing to bandage the wounds of a bleeding soldier. His screams startle me and I pull the headset off. I am not in a warzone after all. I am in George Brown College's School of Design. 

Sure women and men aren't yet equal in the tech and innovation sphere, but that doesn't mean entrepreneurial women aren't working together to succeed. We talk to a new pack of industry leaders making it work with a little help from their friends.

There are a number of things that don't add up when it comes to math education. Meet several Toronto-based entrepreneurs who are taking new approaches to teaching math to students, helping them to build confidence and succeed in academia. 

If you could have coffee with anyone in the world, who would it be? A new youth-driven movement connects the leaders of today with the leaders of tomorrow, bridging the gap between ideas and opportunity, all over a cup of coffee. 

Open data is revolutionizing public access to complex government information. It's allowing entrepreneurs to build new apps based on regional data--from bus times to safe beach databases--all while making the City and its citizens more informed and involved.

By collaborating with universities in India and across the world, and building a mini accelerator program that's set to open in the Bombay Stock Exchange in May, Ryerson looks to help cement Toronto's position as an international innovation capital.