THUNDER BAY — The Lakehead University held an opening ceremony to launch the 20th year of its Research and Innovation Week on Monday at the Outpost.
It featured opening keynote talks, graduate student conferences and a research workshop for the Research Showcase 2025.
Other workshops, student presentations and speaker panels will run from Feb. 24 to Feb. 28.
For Andrew Dean, Lakehead University’s vice president of Research and Innovation, the week has become bigger and better each year.
He said it’s an opportunity for researchers to really show what they’re doing, and he is really amazed at just how proud they are of doing that.
“I’m just amazed at how many of the researchers put their hand up and say, ‘I want to do something,’” said Dean.
He added he was also amazed at how many students are actually engaged in research projects at an undergraduate level and how they get that real excitement for doing research, which they always need more and more people to be involved with.
“To me, research and innovation is kind of the key to the university, but it’s also actually a super exciting place to be (and) an exciting part of a career as well,” said Dean.
Dean encourages students looking to find what fits them and their time, to go to the website for the full schedule and to come to what they want or interests them.
“Lakehead is a relatively small university, but when it comes to research and innovation, it’s amazing just how productive we are and we’d like to show that off,” said Dean.
Some upcoming events will include a guided art tour presented by a key researcher on Tuesday, an award and gala event on Thursday and an Indigenous research panel discussion focusing on economic issues on Friday.
Jill Heinerth, a full-time underwater explorer and the explorer in residence for the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, will also hold talks throughout the week.
“I’m going to be sharing some of my work in underwater exploration, which has involved a lot of different scientific research and technological innovation in order to go to places where nobody’s ever been before, but also bring back images, knowledge (and) data from those places to share with the world,” said Heinerth.
As her first time attending the university and the event, she said she was really excited to be at the great, vibrant campus.
“What I love is it’s a small campus with lots of different areas of study and I think that that’s a really good recipe for the future because collaboration is really at the heart of research and innovation today,” said Heinerth.
“And here there’s an opportunity to get to know people in different disciplines and magnify each other’s work going forward.”
She said one of the key messages in her presentation is that nothing is impossible, it’s just a matter of putting together the right team and the tools to get something done.
“An important thing for a young person to know today is that now that we’re all connected globally through the internet is, do reach out to people that you admire, people that are doing work that you want to do,” said Heinerth.
“And ask for the gig or at least for an introduction because that can really kick doors open for you moving forward.”
Heinerth added that students should also know it’s also alright to fail and make mistakes since, in exploration, “failure is the map that will lead you forward through discovery learning and new opportunities.”
“That is definitely a part of the process, but move forward with gusto, learn from your missteps and the future is yours,” said Heinerth.
For those wanting to reach out, she encourages them to look at her website and check out her movie about her life, which is streaming later this year, called Diving in the Darkness.
