Richard Adamson, Managing Director
In the last CMC Update, I indicated that Carbon Management Canada is building on the great network and research portfolio we started three years ago and that we are transforming ourselves into a new, sustainable business. One of the strengths we intend to build on is the tremendous depth of our research community across Canada and internationally. As we move forward, we are focusing on the development of the international aspects of this network.
Back in the early 1980’s I took a course called Management of Technological Innovation by visiting professor Dr. Pier Abetti of Rensselaer Polytechnic. One key learning he drilled into us was “Technology is transferred by people, not paper” and as I work within the CMC network I am constantly reminded of the importance of this phrase. The strength of CMC is in the relationships that have developed through the face-to-face interactions of our research teams whose members have diverse and deep expertise.
Researcher exchange
Last fall we were visited by a delegation from the UK including Dr. Jon Gibbins, Director of the UK CCS Research Centre and professor at the University of Edinburgh, with whom we started exploring ways of building relationships, starting with researcher exchanges. With diligent follow-up from CMC’s Anita Arduini at Kyoto, this relationship was expanded to include Dr. Richard Aldous, CEO of Australia’s CO2CRC.
Building on this thought Dr. Donald Lawton, Dr. Bernhard Mayer and I, following up on an invitation from the Stanford Center for Carbon Storage (SCCS), paid a visit to Palo Alto. While there we met with the SCCS team, including Dr. Anshul Agarwal and Dr. Sally Benson. Together we identified a number of potential areas for collaborative research between CMC researchers and the SCCS team and will work on formalizing this relationship.
Looking ahead
So what’s next? We are working to establish frameworks to fund researcher exchanges for HQP to the UK (Edinburgh), Australia and Stanford. Watch for announcements from CMC.
If you have a CMC-funded project and already have relationships with these groups that might be suitable for an exchange program, work with your counterparts abroad to be ready.
As always, if you have any comments or questions, please contact me at Richard.Adamson@cmc-nce.ca