Events

Upcoming Events

Past Events

March 22, 2012 Ottawa, Canada Measuring Impacts of S&T Policy and IP Management – A presentation to the Assistant Deputy Ministers’ Committee on Science & Technology by VALGEN Investigator Jeremy de Beer.  Click here to view the presentation.
January 31, 2012 Ottawa, Canada VALGEN Investigator Jeremy de Beer presents to over 150 MPs, Senators and public servants, as well as many university presidents at the FedCan Big Thinking Series. His presentation explored new options for considering intellectual property and how policies can best encourage new, creative research. He argued for a more holistic approach to innovation, one that values the contributions of the social sciences and humanities, while also challenging the ways we traditionally measure progress. To view the presentation click here.
January 26, 2012 Web VALGEN Web Conference – Research Impact and Publication Workshop. Hosted by Peter Phillips, Stuart Smyth and Jeremy Rayner. This workshop features presentation and discussions on maximizing the impact of research as well as identification of collaboration and publication opportunities (note: to view this webinar you will need a recent version of Java).
October 26-28, 2011 Vancouver, Canada Coexistence 2.0: Achieving Coexistence of Biotech, Conventional & Organic Foods in the Market Place
October 4, 2011 Web VALGEN Web Conference – What are the objectives with patent analysis? Hosted by Danielle Lewensohn. Researchers, industry professionals and policy makers use patent analysis to forecast technology trends, identify priorities for national science funding, gain insight about competitors’ patents or as support in planning of R&D projects. Although patent analysis share similarities with methods used in bibliometrics, the data and interpretation used in patent analysis often requires a combination of skills (e.g. economists, lawyers, scientists) .This web seminar focussed on the topic of patent analysis and specifically discuss the objectives behind conducting patent analysis. The seminar will draw on an extensive literature review across the science, business and management literature. (note: to view this webinar you will need a recent version of Java).
August 30, 2011 Web Social Networking Analysis Workshop – held at the University of Saskatchewan (with web locations at the uOttawa, Karolinska Intstitute and University of Regina). (note: to view this 3 hour workshop you will need a recent version of Java)
June 17, 2011 Web VALGEN Web Conference: Expertise and Engagement in the Canadian Policy Process Originally hosted by Dr. Mavis Jones on June 17, 2011, this 25 minute web seminar relates to a key concern of social research on science and technology policy: the extent to which citizen perspectives can, or should, be incorporated into state decision-making. Canadian regulators and policy makers traditionally consult with scientist advisors to evaluate risk, and stakeholders to assess public tolerance for various outcomes. In some complex matters, however, this division of roles might no longer make sense, as policy makers need to discriminate between useful sources of input. Drawing from our analysis of the complex topic of biofuels and renewable energy, this seminar will explore the tension between expert-driven and democratic approaches to evidence-based technology policy development through a discussion of the utility of a classification system for expertise, such as the controversial periodic table of expertise (Collins and Evans 2007).
April 27, 2011 Ottawa, Canada International Workshop on Ethics and Biotechnology Public Policymaking.Information Program Web site
March 28, 2011 Web VALGEN Web Conference: Public-Private Partnerships and the Global Pulse Crop Breeding R&D Networks: A Social Network Analysis of Competing Knowledge Translation SystemsBill Boland presented his research findings and discuss the critical role of public-private partnerships (P3) in the management of the global pulse crop breeding R&D Networks. The global and three autonomous regional pulse breeding R&D networks provide a case study on the role of the P3. Three distinctive P3s are analyzed: the producer managed and funded P3s, the CDC/SPG P3 in Saskatchewan and the GRDC of Australia; the inter-governmental P3 from the European Union, GLIP, and the developmental P3s of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), ICRADA and ICRISAT. The research findings specify a central role of the R&D P3 in anchoring and linking national and regional pulse R&D systems into the global pulse R&D system.
March 21, 2011 Saskatoon, Canada Jeremy de Beer: Biotech: How Courts Control our Crops
March 15, 2011 Saskatoon, Canada Science Cafe: Brave New World or Franken-Future? The New Science of Synthetic Biology
January 20-21, 2011 Banff, Canada Intellectual Property in the ABC World Presentations Workshop Report
December 11-14, 2010 Honolulu, USA Bio Pacific Rim Summit on Biotechnology and Bioenergyhttp://www.bio.org/pacrim/
December 6-7, 2010 Paris, France ESRC Genomics Network 4th International Conferencehttp://www.genomicsnetwork.ac.uk/forum/conference2010/
December 3, 2010 Web conference Novelty in the Canadian Regulatory Systemhttps://connect.usask.ca/p80473912/
October 25, 2010 Edinburgh, Scotland Seminar: “Knowledge management as a precondition of life sciences innovation”. University of Edinburgh. http://www.genomicsnetwork.ac.uk/innogen/events/title,24022,en.html.
Sept 30- Oct. 1 Saskatoon, Canada CETA’s Regulatory Implications for the Bioenergy Sector
Managing interfaces among trade, environment and technology policies is especially important to the bioenergy industry, an area of mutual strategic interest for Canada and the EU for its impact on climate change, energy security, agricultural sustainability and prosperity in the bio-based economy. The bio-energy sector is also an excellent case study in regulatory integration and coordination generally. This workshop, co-hosted by the TETE and VALGEN projects, brought together Canadian and European experts working on interconnected issues around bioenergy policy. Together they mapped the networked, multi-level governance and regulatory environment around bioenergy-related aspects of genomics research and applications development. click here to view the presentations and final report
Sept 29 Montreal, Canada VALGEN investigator Dr. Richard Gold joins the leaders of the PhytoMetaSyn project Dr. Vincent Martin and Peter Facchini to discuss synthetic biology and the potential societal and environmental impacts of this novel technology. Link to podcast
Sept 12 – 15 Saskatoon, Canada Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference
http://www.abic.ca/abic2010/
July 14 VALGEN Web Conference
New approaches to regulating applied genomics for bioproducts and crops. Presented by Dr. Peter Phillips.
June 16-18 Ravello, Italy 14th ICABR Conference on Bioeconomy Governance: Policy, Environmental and Health Regulation, and Public Investments in Research.
Organized by the International Consortium on Agricultural Biotechnology Research (ICABR).http://www.economia.uniroma2.it/icabr-conference.VALGEN presenters (VALGEN researchers are underlined):

  • David Castle Foresight Methods for Biofuel Governance Abstract
  • Peter Phillips and Cristina Holguin-Pando. Technology Transfer in Transitional Economies: The Case of Mexico Abstract
  • Viktoriya Galushko, Stuart Smyth, Richard Gray, Paul Arnison. Resolving FTO Barriers in GM Canola Abstract
  • Stuart Smyth, Peter Phillips , William Kerr. The Incompatibility of Science and Trade at the International Level Abstract
  • Andrew Baker, Stuart Smyth. Managing Opportunism in Value-Added Supply Chains Abstract
  • Karinne Ludlow, Stuart Smyth. Pure Economic Loss and Agricultural Biotechnology: Comparing Australia, Canada and the United States. Abstract

Dr. David Castle and Dr. Stuart Smyth were on the Program Committee and, with Dr. Peter Phillips, on the International Scientific Committee.
June 10 Saskatoon, Canada A Model of Regulatory Burden for the Diffusion of New Technology.Presented by Dr. David Castle.  Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy Public Lecture.
May 27-28, 2010 Amsterdam, Netherlands Ten years after Mapping the Societal Genomics Landscape.
The Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam International Scientific Conference.
This event was is organized by the Centre for Society and Genomics (the Netherlands), in collaboration with the ESRC Genomics Network (United Kingdom) and VALGEN (Canada).  VALGEN lead Dr. David Castle also served on the program committee.

  • Cami Ryan and Stuart Smyth. Detrimental Social and Trade Impacts due to Adventitious Presence (AP): case study of GM Flax
  • David Castle and Peter Phillips. Industrial biotechnology: inside views on innovation
  • Jeremy Rayner and Edna Einsiedel. Trends in the Governance of Agricultural Genomics.
  • Marc Saner. The Societal Landscape of Future Genomics.

All abstracts are available at http://www.society-genomics.nl/fileadmin/user_upload/congres/CSG-Conferencebook-2010.pdf
April 29, 2010 Saskatoon, Canada Barriers and Opportunities in the Commercialization of Genomics-Based Bioproducts and Crops Workshop
Summary of Outcomes
April 14 Saskatoon, Canada Introduction to Social Network Analysis (SNA) and SNA Tools. Hosted by VALGEN at the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy and facilitated by Dr. Cami Ryan (TUFGEN).
March 8 Versailles, France Futures Workshop on Social Sciences Research in the Post-Genomics Era Université de Versailles, Versailles, March 8/2010. (overview attached Appendix A.3) which engaged a range of VALGEN investigators and collaborators (Allansdottir, Castle, Chadwick, Culver, Einsiedel, Korthals, Osseweijer, Phillips, Sturdy and Zwart).
March 3-4 Florence, Italy Contextualizing intellectual property in innovation systems perspective. European University Institute. This event brought together a group of scholars and VALGEN collaborators from Canada (Bubela, Castle, Gold and Phillips), the EU (Culver, Schillo)and Australia (Nicol) to discuss the options for managing knowledge generated in the context of innovation systems.
Jan 28-29 Banff, Canada VALGEN Genome Canada Integration WorkshopWorkshop Report VALGEN Banff Workshop Slides