At the regional Startup Canada Awards for entrepreneurship held last fall, three UNB innovators were recognized by the national organization for their commitment and achievement.
Cybersecurity pioneer Ali Ghorbani (PhD'96) was honoured with Startup Canada's Senior Entrepreneur Award, Dhirendra Shukla, a driving force behind some of UNB’s most successful entrepreneurship programs, received the Entrepreneur Promotion Award, and Jordan Kennie (BScEng'16, D-TME'16, MEng'17), a graduate of UNB’s entrepreneurial programs and CEO of the Fredericton-based startup Stash Energy, was saluted with the Young Entrepreneur Award.
The annual Startup Canada Awards celebrate and recognize individuals and companies that are driving innovation and demonstrating excellence in Canada’s entrepreneurship community.
Before founding the Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity at UNB, Ali Ghorbani served as dean of UNB’s faculty of computer science. He is the co-inventor of three awarded patents in network security and web intelligence, and is the co-founder of two startups, Sentrant and Eyesover.
The holder of a Canada Research Chair in Cybersecurity, Ghorbani has developed a number of technologies adopted by high-tech companies, obtained more than $14 million in research funding and helped create a critical mass of IT professionals in cybersecurity, machine learning and data mining.
Dhirendra Shukla, chair of UNB's Dr. J. Herbert Smith Centre for Technology Management and Entrepreneurship, has been instrumental in the development and growth of some of the university’s most notable entrepreneurship programs, including the Summer Institute, the diploma and master’s level Technology Management and Entrepreneurship programs, and the Energia Ventures startup accelerator. More than 60 startups have emerged from these programs in the last two years. His current research interests are in venture capital, syndication, entrepreneurship and corporate finance.
Jordan Kennie, and his company Stash Energy, created an energy storage solution that works with residential heat pumps in order to shift peak energy usage and optimize the use of renewable generators. They are currently working with utilities across Atlantic Canada to bring their product to market. Their product will allow for the reduction of environmentally harmful generators being used across North America while saving utilities hundreds of millions of dollars.
Kennie is taking Stash Energy through UNB’s Energia Ventures accelerator and is involved in a pilot project testing his firm’s technology in Summerside, PEI. Read an article on Jordan Kennie from Opportunities New Brunswick.
