Collaborative network building should be a key component of the entrepreneur’s toolkit, particularly for individuals focused on advancing technologies and creating companies from the earliest stages of academic discovery, posits Michael May, CEO of the Canadian Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine.
May will make the case to support this position on Wednesday, May 9 when he delivers the next Ernest C. Mercier Lecture in Entrepreneurial Chemistry.
Michael May
May’s lecture, titled “Me, Myself and My Network: The Importance of Collaboration to Entrepreneurship in a Capital-Limited Environment”, begins at 5:30pm and will be situated in the new Life Sciences Building on York’s Keele campus.
Regenerative Medicine (RM), which aims to harness the power of stem cells, biomaterials and molecules to repair, regenerate or replace diseased cells, tissues and organs, has the promise to treat, manage and perhaps cure some of the most devastating and costly diseases in the world today. However, many new and potentially life-changing RM-based treatments never reach patients because they are not successfully moved from the laboratory to a stage where they can be used in medicine.
The Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine, which May leads, is a Canadian not-for-profit dedicated to supporting the development of foundational technologies that accelerate the commercialization of stem cell and biomaterial based technologies that are a part of regenerative medicine. In order to fulfill RM’s promise to treat the many diseases affecting the population, a world-renowned group of stem cell scientists and bioengineers came together to create the centre.
May, who completed his PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Toronto in 1998 as a Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council of Canada scholar, was awarded the Martin Walmsley Fellowship for Technological Entrepreneurship in recognition of the commercialization of academic discoveries.
About Ernest C. Mercier
In an effort to inspire and empower future generations of chemistry students at York with a sense of the possible, Mr. Mercier’s wife, Eileen Mercier, a York graduate (MBA ’77), established the lecture series in her late husband’s name. 
Bridging the worlds of business and commerce with the intensive research world of chemistry, the series presents an entrepreneur and renowned scientist who has used his/her own science education as a springboard to other enterprises.
Ernest C. Mercier
“Ernest believed that the benefits of discipline and analytical thinking, which his engineering education provided, were basic to understanding the cause-and-effect laws of business.” says Ms. Mercier. “This lectureship will hopefully inspire others to use their education in similarly unique ways.”
The Ernest C. Mercier Lecture in Entrepreneurial Chemistry is generously sponsored by Ms. Mercier and presented by the Faculty of Science & Engineering and the Schulich School of Business.
To learn more about this lecture, contact Melanie Litwin, senior advancement events planner, at 416-650-8107, or e-mail advevent@yorku.ca.
By Jenny Pitt-Clark, YFile editor