October 2003
Ontario bio and life sciences strategies and clusters in development
ORION is “a natural partner” in the development of bio-medical and life science cluster development in Ontario, says Phil Baker, President and CEO of the Optical Regional Advanced Network of Ontario (ORANO), which owns and operates the new high-speed ORION network.
In remarks to a recent Networking Summit on the new Biotechnology Cluster Innovation Program (BCIP), Baker emphasized that Ontario currently has a competitive lead over other jurisdictions in the area of gigabit connectivity among other research and education institutions.
Ontario’s Biotechnology Secretariat recently launched the program in order to accelerate the development of Ontario's biotechnology and related industry clusters. The Secretariat is currently working with 11 regional consortia in all regions of Ontario.
The program will support projects that enhance the commercialization of new research discoveries and the start of new companies to create the receptor capacity that enables the diffusion of biotechnologies into other knowledge-based industries and traditional industry sectors such as chemicals, plastics, fuels, and forestry.
Baker, invited to address the Networking Summit in Toronto earlier this month, outlined the availability and the benefits of ORION as a collaborative infrastructure.
“ORION offers an ideal opportunity to establish virtual clusters of bio-medical and life science research, in partnership with ORION user institutions,” said Baker.
“ORION gives Ontario a clear competitive advantage over other jurisdictions by deploying a telecommunications infrastructure of ORION’s scope and capacity for R&E and R&D,” said Baker. Other jurisdictions are as far as 18 months behind Ontario in deploying this sort of infrastructure, he said.
“We need to take advantage of this competitive lead,” he said.
R&D project methodologies are evolving rapidly to address new large-scale data and computational requirements. Access to large-scale data and computational resources in “real time” reduces researchers’ wait time for data and results.
Today, cross-disciplinary teams and new knowledge are required to advance most discoveries. Incorporating collaborative technologies and tools to allow such teams to work together, often from remote locations, is critical to advanced research.
“Digitized medical and biological data involves the transmittal, storage and rapid access to terabytes of information, equivalent to thousands of filing cabinets. Access to large data storage resources and massive computational power with high-speed transmission connectivity is a necessity for the next generation of bio-medical and life sciences research,” said Baker.
He noted that collaboration within and across regions is key to geography-based and virtual cluster development. “ORION’s gigabit infrastructure enables the seamless transmittal of data at this scale and magnitude and the degree of interactivity necessary for effective collaboration across distances.
Baker emphasized that ORION is now operational and provides a core infrastructure for bio and life science cluster development, pointing out that the network already extends to all cluster regions across Ontario and is accessible through our post secondary education institutions and research facilities, ready to partner with companies on their R&D programs.
ORION allows private sector researchers access to the network, if in partnership with an eligible ORION user institution, such as a college, university or public sector research lab, on a short-term, project basis.
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