December 2007
Changes at the helm of ORANO Board
Contact North/Contact Nord President and CEO Maxim Jean-Louis takes over as Chair of the ORANO Board of Directors, as former Chair, Dr. Stan Shapson, ends his three-year term at the helm of Ontario's ultra high-speed optical research and education network. Anne Sado, President of George Brown College in Toronto, was elected Vice Chair.
New Board Vice Chair Anne Sado (left) and new Board Chair Maxim Jean-Louis (right) present Stan Shapson (centre) with commemorative ORION plaque for his three years as Board Chair of ORANO.
"This is just the beginning and I am very excited about the future and the role the Board and ORION can play," says Jean-Louis.
One of Ontario's most accomplished education leaders specializing in technology, distance learning and alternative delivery with a special focus on small and remote communities, Maxim Jean-Louis has been President and CEO of Contact North/Contact Nord since 1996. A founding member of the ORANO Board of Directors, Jean-Louis has been a dedicated supporter of ORION since its inception.
With network use growing over 600 per cent in the last two years alone, ORION is playing a growing and increasingly vital role as critical infrastructure for research and education in Ontario - enabling advanced teaching and learning, distributed high-performance computing, collaborative research projects spanning the globe and supporting researchers in fields such as medicine, the environment and physics.
"Having access to this world-class technology places Ontario in the top rung of global players. I'm proud that we have been able to contribute in a very tangible way to providing our province with this critical asset and to support our transformation towards a knowledge-based economy," says Jean-Louis.
"Our focus now is on introducing new services and applications that can take advantage of ORION to accelerate the use of sophisticated new enabling technologies to support the work of our researchers, scientists, teachers, learners and innovators in Ontario," he says.
Several leaders of Ontario's research and education community gathered to honour Dr. Shapson and his contribution to ORANO following the Board's Annual General Meeting on Dec. 6, including Ontario Deputy Minister of Research and Innovation, Dr. Alastair Glass.
"We are grateful to Dr. Shapson's leadership during the last few years and his role in our success in expanding the network and helping introduce new and exciting collaborations in Ontario's research and education community," says ORANO President/CEO Phil Baker.
"It has been an exciting time serving as Chair of the ORANO Board for the last three years," said Dr. Shapson, VP of Research and Innovation at York University. "In such a short time, ORION has gained a secure foothold in many Ontario institutions and proved indispensable to both researchers and educators."
"Given my perspective at that time, I would have been happy with a doubling or tripling of ORION usage," said founding Chair, Dr. Ross Paul, President of the University of Windsor. "The 600 per cent increase says it all and is a tribute to Phil's leadership and to Stan's wonderful network and his dedication to making this happen."
Apart from his work with ORION, Maxim Jean-Louis has served as Chair of the Broadband Wireless Multimedia Group - a public/private partnership consortium - and held board memberships in leading organizations including the Chair's Advisory Council on e-government for the Government of Ontario, the Ontario Postsecondary Education Quality Assessment Board, and World University Service of Canada. He currently serves on the Groupe de travail permanent sur l'education en langue francaise of the Ontario Ministry of Education, the board of Computers for Schools Ontario, and the Citizenship and Immigration Canada-Francophone Minority Communities Steering Committee (CIC-FMC).
For more information, read the official release.
Back to Headlines
|
|
