FORUM OF INNOVATIONS - 2008

Forum Initiators and Organizers

The governor general of Canada, The Right Honourable Romeo LeBlanc was appointed his high title in the period of high immigration wave of 1990's. In his installation speech, he mentioned that Canada is remarkably different from many other countries in the world because "We are all immigrants to this land. It's just that some of us came earlier than others"..

Immigration has never been easy. Despite of the fact that all immigrants are considered to be equal when it comes to legal issues and laws, not everyone goes through the same process of adaptation to the new society. Many immigrants have to go through many hardships before they can brag about their social status or about their dreams coming true, if they can achieve that at all.

Governmental organizations that have settlement programs for newcomers are supposed to create the most beneficial conditions in order to aid newcomers in achieving their professional and social adaptation goals quickly and effectively. However, these organizations are not able to provide these conditions or settings in order to take an advantage of the rich intellectual potentials as well as amazing creative capabilities of new residents of Canada. Many highly educated and qualified professionals cannot realize their skills and experiences. Despite of all the measures taken to solve this issue, the problem does not go away, but rather becomes more evident. This brings us to the difficulty of this problem and to the fact that not everything has been done to resolve it..

It is obvious that adaptation barriers that immigrants face are not only objective in nature, such as: poor knowledge of English, cultural and social differences; but also are artificially created, such as: laws and regulations that rule adaptation of immigrants in Canada. These artificially created rules and regulations are often the biggest obstacle to overcome because they do not consider the specifics of former educational, professional, and lived experiences of immigrants..

Back in 1991, immigrants from the former countries of the Soviet Union created an organization called Alliance of Technology and Science Specialists of Toronto ? ATSS. The goal of the Alliance is to provide mutual assistance in professional adaptation that the creators of ATSS could not receive in official agencies. In 1993 ATSS was registered as an independent non-for-profit corporation and now accounts for approximately 1000 immigrant specialist members. Many more immigrants have received different kind of help from ATSS. The Members of ATSS know about the difficulties of adaptation processes and they can relate to the problems of newcomers, helping them to find employment faster. Moreover, immigrants coming from the former Soviet Union (but not limited from other countries), who share the same cultural, educational, or ethnic background with other members of ATSS also get the advantage of having a shared sense of mentality, which plays an important role in providing mutual help.

The following programs are the three core Programs offered at ATSS:

• - Professional Orientation and Adaptation
• - Innovations and Businesses Development
• - Social and Cultural Settlement

Currently ATSS does not receive financial support from the government and all the services and Program provided by the Alliance for newcomers and immigrants come alive with the help of volunteers. These are people who not only have the means to do so, but who are also interested in doing this work, because they dedicate their free time doing it. For example, in order to help high-level specialists to adapt to Canada as quickly as possible; a computer program titled EMPAGE was created. EMPAGE was formed as a collaborative effort with DISK with the goal to enhance ATSS's program "Professional Orientation and Adaptation". EMPAGE scored very highly and received positive feedback from many specialized agencies of a large scale. These agencies and organizations include COSTI, JVS, and Skills for Change. The experts from Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration, Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities of Ontario also positively rated EMPAGE. In order to enrich its "Professional Orientation and Adaptation" Program, ATSS had been collaborating with such employment agencies and centers as JIAS and some private Agencies for many years.

With the help from EMPAGE, every specialist can develop a suitable career path before positioning him or her on the Canadian labour market. In order to achieve successful professional adaptation it is also crucial to consider psychological, social, cultural, and other preferences and qualities of an individual, together with individual's educational and practical experience.

"Business Development" Programme is useful for those immigrants who need help in realizing their innovations, creative ideas, or projects in Canada. In collaboration with DISK, a revolutionary methodology to create special type of Technological Incubators was formed. This methodology consists of conducting registrations, preliminary innovation examination, and determining ways to realize and commercially implement various innovations and projects. ATSS encourages newcomers to volunteer their time and work on implementing the steps of methodology with the goal to prepare innovations for commercialization. Working together with skilled specialists, newcomers have a good chance to receive valuable Canadian experience in their field by working on a highly professional level. Volunteers also receive excellent references and recommendations from their employers and mentors at ATSS.

The Data Base of ATSS contains about sixty innovatory projects developed by ATSS members living all over the world, including Canada, Russia, Israel, and the United States. Presently, ATSS holds several Technological Incubators, which are managed exclusively by volunteers. However, since innovations are becoming vitally important in the current economical situation, a real possibility to get financial basis for continuing work of Technological Incubators appears..

ATSS invites all interested persons, parties, organizations, and funding companies who would like to partner for mutual benefit to get familiar with the concept of Technological Incubators and projects associated with them..

Any professional environment requires a medium for social professional interaction and networking. In the countries of former USSR, professional clubs like a House of Architectures, Journalists, Scientists, were created to fulfill this role. ATSS successfully implemented these interest professional clubs in Canada, a country that does not practice professional networking. We have these clubs running within the boundaries of "Professional orientation and adaptation" and "Innovations and Businesses Development" Program.

ATSS was created for those immigrants who want to lead active and creative lives. Within "Social and Cultural Settlement" Program members of Alliance aid newcomers and their families to adapt to Canadian society more fully. This kind of adaptation is socio-cultural in nature and immigrants from many countries will find a possibility to put their talents and creative potential to use. For that purpose, ATSS has already created theatrical studio "BRAVO", a choir "Castle of Music" and the club of connoisseurs "What? Where? When?"

ATSS has a web site http://www.atss.org. The ATSS web site was launched in 1998 and is an innovative Portal that includes a number of features and Projects especially designed for immigrant specialists. The main goal of the ATSS web site is to provide information about ATSS activities, which are aimed at facilitation of professional and social adaptation of highly skilled immigrants into the Canadian economy and society. ATSS consists of the following projects:

• DATA BASE of Specialists
• DATA BASE of Innovations
• Publications (with "Forum")
• Events
• Job Opportunities
• Membership
• Classified

E-Journal NOOSPHERE (http://e-noosphere.com/) is a unique multi-profile online publication for professional and cultural exchange between English and Russian speaking audiences. E-Journal is an anthology of articles written by specialists from different disciplines (such as medicine, science, and technology) and countries (such as Canada, USA, Europe, Israel, and former USSR). NOOSPHERE also contains works of literary and artistic creations for all members who would like to express themselves in a creative field. Due to its multi-profile nature, NOOSPHERE acts as an important psychologically comforting zone and outlet to aid newcomers in adaptation processes, especially to aid the newcomer members of creative intelligentsia..

HOW THE FORUM WAS ORGANIZED

	For the first time in Canada, the FORUM OF INNOVATIONS, under a motto Harnessing Immigrants- Intellectual Potential took place on June 5th of 2008. Forum attended more than 300 people, and 40 innovations and innovatory projects have been presented by the immigrant members of ATSS and by innovators from other countries.
Forum plenary session

The Programs and projects of ATSS gathered an interest from Municipality of Toronto (Mr. Mike Feldman, Councilor) and Department of Enterprise Toronto. Enterprise Toronto became a partner of ATSS and it supported the initiative to create FORUM OF INNOVATIONS-2008 under a motto "Harnessing Immigrants' Intellectual Power"

All immigrants are faced with obstacles on the way of their professional or innovatory realization in Canada. Mainly this is due to the lack of information about certain conditions and regulations as well as inadequate knowledge of English. These issues do not help newcomers to adapt to the new environment quickly and successfully. FORUM OF INNOVATIONS was created to portray this enormous intellectual and creative potential that newcomers bring to Canada with them. The organizers of forum were determined to demonstrate that not being able to use this potential by employers in Canada is a colossal waste of talents and intellectual capabilities of immigrants. One other important goal of ATSS was to offer newcomers a rare opportunity to receive valuable information. It is important to note that ATSS possessed all the needed requirements in order to achieve these goals. The goals have been achieved due to many years of experience and work in attracting high-profile specialists; and due to collaborative relations with many community and governmental organizations. ATSS is experienced in providing help to immigrant specialists in different specializations. The organizers of the FORUM were hoping to show the importance of innovation programs which exist at ATSS and the need to continue their development with sufficient financial support from governmental resources and other funds.

It would be very hard to achieve success in organizing FORUM OF INNIVATIONS without the collaborative work between ATSS and their partner agency Enterprise Toronto, the Municipality of Toronto. M. Feldman and Nina Zaslavskaya, (Constituency Liaison), a representative of the Russian Community offered a lot of help during organizing and implementing stages.

Vitaly Guitberg, Rudolf Stanovski and Oksana Kats worked intensively with the managers of Enterprise Toronto Frank Bedard and Jason Lee in order to prepare the FORUM and to demonstrate over 40 (!) innovative projects that have been developed by the members of ATSS. The organizers of FORUM were able to reveal those amazing creative, organizational, and general human qualities that the members of our community have to many residents of Greater Toronto Area, who attended the FORUM OF INNOVATIONS.

ATSS wishes to thank many Russian newspapers (Canadian Courier, West-East Toronto, Gazette -Plus?) for their support in promotion of the Forum. We are thanking those community organizations of Toronto, such as Canadian Multicultural Council, Community Unity Alliance of Committee in Community Race & Ethnic Relations. ATSS appreciates the effort of all volunteers, who have sacrificed their free time and energy to benefit their colleagues.

A special thank you goes to the National Research Council of Canada, Canadian Intellectual Property Office, Canada-Ontario Business Service Centre, Canadian Revenue Agencies, Toronto Public Library, Rogers and AeroSwit Airlines for their financial support. ATSS was honored to have the following organizations as presenters at the FORUM: The Innovation Synergy Centre in Markham (ISCM), MaRS, BioDiscovery Toronto (Innovative Research Partnership for Health). These organizations shared their valuable experiences about the support that can be offered to independent innovators and entrepreneurs in order to implement their projects and ideas.

WHAT TO DO WITH INNOVATIONS?

During the second part of the Forum, an important seminar was carried out, titled "Technological Incubators " the best way to implement innovations. The members of various ethnic communities which were present at the seminar stated that they all face similar barriers on their way to realize and implement their ideas and projects. Inventors do not believe that it is possible to overcome those barriers without the sufficient financial help from governmental organizations.

The idea of "Technological Incubators" or "Technological Greenhouses" is not well know to the general public. These "incubators" provide appropriate "conditions for innovators" ideas or projects to flourish like flowers and they exist in Israel, Sweden, and in some cities in the USA. However, these "technological incubators" do not exist in Canada and immigrant inventors do not receive adequate support because they are treated equally and have to consider the same opportunities as innovators who have lived in Canada for many years or were born in Canada. Unfortunately, this practice puts newcomers at a real disadvantage, because they cannot even start realizing their projects without having Canadian experience or education. Even the most interesting, talented, and valuable projects cannot overcome these obstacles.

"Technological Incubators" Seminar

Governmental funds mostly support pre-planned projects initiated by groups who cooperate with scientific organizations or universities. However, independently initiated ideas that come from newcomers and immigrants cannot get through the high standards in order to get needed financial support, acknowledgement and implementation. The most talented and efficient projects, which could be used to improve the economical situation in Canada, are simply wasted. The creators of ATSS hope that governmental organizations of Ontario and Canada will be able to understand that ATSS offers real ways to solve this problem, because it acknowledges the specific situation of newcomers instead of using it against them. At the FORUM is was stressed that without considering the special circumstances newcomers are in, it is impossible to help them in implementing their ideas in Canada. .

For this Forum, The Alliance of Technology and Science Specialists of Toronto was able to accumulate, register, translate, prepare, and present about forty innovatory projects for the public view! This would not be possible if ATSS did not have the help of many volunteers. ATSS invited volunteer specialists in the field of "Intellectual property", organized a group of volunteers, which included mentors, consultants, and interpreters in order to help newcomers to implement their innovations. Other undertakings to aid newcomers with their projects included organization and implementation of seminars, and the creation of Database of Innovations on the web site www.atss.org. All these initiatives allowed ATSS to create special "Technological Incubators", in which innovatory projects are able to grow and develop further. It is important for newcomers to do volunteer work at developing their ideas in "Technological Incubators" since they are able to get valuable Canadian experience or develop partnerships for further business contacts.

Due to financial restrictions, ATSS was not able to present all 60 innovations on the FORUM OF INNOVATIONS, but those 40 projects, which were presented on Trade Show received great interest from the audience. The innovations were aimed at solving many global problems that exist in today's society in the areas of ecology, medicine, informational technologies, energy consumption, and others.

The highlights presented at the FORUM, included such innovations as: "The System of Monitoring the Catastrophic Geodynamic Processes" developed by Henrikh Vartanian on a base of his discovery. The mathematical theory of "Golden section" has received its further perfection in many works of academic Alexey Stakhov who is the author of the new interdisciplinary theory: "Mathematics of Harmony". The author has presented a number of publications, including the development of mathematical base for the creation of the new type of computer, at the Forum. Works of academic Stakhov have obtained the international recognition, but still are not accredited in Canada.

An interview with world famous British futurologist James Martin was published in the June 2008 issue of "West-East Toronto' newspaper. During the interview he mentioned that if we do not create a single computer knowledge base, as well as the computer system, which would use artificial intelligence techniques to find optimum solutions, humankind would return to the Stone Age.

Mr. Martin also states: in the next 20-30 years the world economy will rely on the global modules of the united network of artificial intelligence more than on gas prices. Vitaly Guitberg conducted theoretical-methodological projects in this area, including "the General Methodology of the computerized System Analysis and Design", and the model of system architecture called "Info-environment". "Info-environment" includes a global Knowledge Base - a working experimental version mentioned by James Martin. The KB software developed by Eugene Kozhemyakin.

The Methodology and the model of the mentioned system were used as a basis for the development of several applications such as the Intelligent Information and Expert Systems, used for various areas of human activity. A team of experts, directed by V. Guitberg is presented models of these systems at the Forum. They included a model of the Nation wide Intelligent Information and Expert System, and also models of such applied systems as ComRAD, for designing the optimal medical process, and EMPAGE, for designing the optimal job placement process.

The professor of the Norwegian University Guennadi Kouzaev (being simultaneously a non-executive director of ATSS) had been presented the model of the new type of processor called Predicate Logic Processor, as technological support for the above-mentioned systems. The Predicate Logic Processor ensures information processing at a higher speed, which is very important for the work with the global Data Base.

(From right to left: Toronto Municipality Consul Micle Feldman, Ìàéêë Ôåëüäìàí, Forum Coordinator of Enterprise Toronto Jacon Lee, ATSS President Vitaly Guitberg)

It is difficult to enumerate all innovations, which have been presented at the Forum Trade Show, because their spectrum is so wide. Boris Feldman and his sons presented a number of innovations in Hi-Tech field, Against Warming, Intrusion detection and event recognition and Flood Protection System, as well as the recently published book "From calculator to supercomputer" about the history of creation of domestic computers in the former USSR.

The number of devices, which could be physically analyzed, were also presented. These devices included the following:

• The Diagnostic and therapeutic equipment for Holistic Medicine (Millimeter Waves Therapy) presented by Michael Teppone,
• the Wireless Alarm Connection System to a Health Care Specialist device by Sander Stepanov for the monitoring of heart condition,
• The Oncoshuttle technology (for Cancer treatment) developed by the team of specialists directed by Vladimir Pak;
• The Expendable Medical Self-Destructible Syringe and Indirect Evaporative Cooler IEAC by Fatim Nabiulin,
• The RFID RTLS Long range active tags methodology as First responders Monitoring Systems developed by Eugene Razymovich
• The new type of Garage for multi-level parking of cars environment friendly, developed by Alex Likhterman,
• Two different the fuel-efficient ecological devices developed by Michael Vinokyr and Natural gas vehicles engine and refueling devices by Peter Pham.

These and many other innovations, presented at the FORUM generated a lot of interest by the audience. Organizers were pleased to see that almost all printed information about innovations and projects designed by newcomers was taken by the people who attended the FORUM. Nobody expected to see such a reach intellectual treasure!

Here are some more wonderful innovations that have to be mentioned: "The Computer- assisted system for cuff-less arterial pressure monitoring and measuring", automatic early diagnosis and feedback control of Hypertension and Cardiac Arrhythmia by Viktor Kardashov (Israel); "The online Decision Support System (DSS) "ESTIMATION & CHOIC" by Arthur Ioffin; "The New coagulant to clean manufacturing water" by Nina and Sergey Stremilov (Russia-Canada); The methodology "The Structural Harmony Chart of HydrosphereTM (SHC)" by Rimma Vedom, "Integrated ETHEC Technology - Innovative Waste Energy Recycling Process" by Aleksander Gurfinkel USA); "The method to determine groups of consumers for effective enterprise work" by Rudolf Satanovsky; "Highly Effective Sorbent" (manufactured from super thin Basalt fiber) by Alexander Bachmutsky and Yuliy Gor (USA), "Relief of residual stresses by electro-hydraulic shocks" by Boris Meriin; the Musical Instrument and method of musical education for children by Elevira Smelova and more.

ATSS is currently waiting for offers of cooperation in projects development and realization under the "Technological Incubators" Program from all interested parties..