Farah Alibay

Farah Alibay is an aerospace engineer working in the United States. Born in Montreal (Quebec, Canada), she spent much of her childhood in Joliette (Quebec) and her teenage years in Manchester (United Kingdom), tinkering with all kinds of projects and developing a fascination with space and exploration. These passions led her to pursue a bachelor’s and master’s degree in aerospace and aerothermal engineering at the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, United Kingdom) before returning to North America to pursue a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Boston, USA) with a concentration in systems engineering. In 2014, she joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where she was part of the Mars 2020 mission, working on the Perseverance rover—which landed on Mars in February 2021—and the Ingenuity helicopter, which performed the first controlled flight on another planet in April 2021. Before joining this team, she worked on several other missions, including the InSight Mars lander and the Mars Cube One (MarCO) CubeSats. In 2022, she became the flight systems engineer for the SPHEREx telescope, an infrared telescope that was launched in early 2025. She is now the instrument engineer for the VERITAS mission, a satellite that will explore Venus.

Outside of her day job, Farah is passionate about science communication and has appeared in numerous newspapers, television and radio shows, and conferences around the world. She encourages women and minorities to get involved in STEM and is committed to helping make the field more diverse and equitable. She is also active in her local community, notably as a big sister in the Big Brother Big Sister program in Los Angeles. Finally, in her free time, Farah explores the mountains near her home, where she enjoys hiking, rock climbing, and mountaineering.

Pierre Lavoie

A man who thrives on a challenge, Pierre has competed in more than 30 Ironman races around the world. He then drew on the same factors that led to his success to survive—twice—the most difficult ordeal of a lifetime: losing a child to a particularly virulent hereditary disease in the Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean region—lactic acidosis. Pierre then decided to launch the Pierre Lavoie Challenge: a 650-kilometer bike ride around the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region in 24 hours! This event, which has been held four times, has raised awareness of this disease and attracted the interest of researchers, leading to the discovery of the gene responsible for lactic acidosis in 2003. He later founded the Grand Défi Pierre Lavoie, a 1,000-km ride across Quebec to promote physical activity and healthy lifestyles. Pierre, who describes himself as a very ordinary man, shows us through his extraordinary and remarkable journey that to be successful—in any field—we must have perseverance, motivation, and respect for those around us.

Kathryn Hume

Kathryn Hume leads AI Engineering at the Vector Institute, where she builds tools and platforms that further industry adoption of frontier AI research. Prior to joining Vector, she held multiple technology leadership roles in financial services and AI, including Chief Technology Officer for Tangerine Bank, Vice President of Technology for RBC’s mobile, online banking, and direct investing businesses, and Interim Head of Borealis AI, RBC's AI research institute. Before joining RBC, she held leadership roles at AI startups integrate.ai and Fast Forward Labs (acquired by Cloudera).

Kathryn is a recognized author and public speaker, with work appearing at TED, the Harvard Business Review, and the Globe & Mail. She has served as a guest lecturer and adjunct professor — teaching courses on applied AI and responsible AI — at the Harvard Business School, Stanford, the University of Toronto, and the University of Calgary. She is a mother of two young boys, a board member at CanadaHelps active in the charity sector, and an advocate for women in technology and educational reform in the age of generative AI.

Sylvain Charbonneau

On October 1, 2024, Sylvain Charbonneau became the sixth President and CEO of the CFI. He is a former researcher, entrepreneur and leader in research administration.

Before joining the CFI, he held the role of Vice-President, Research and Innovation at the University of Ottawa. During his tenure at the university, he promoted interdisciplinary research across Canada and helped create a dynamic environment that attracted outstanding researchers and partners from the academic, public, hospital and private sectors. Most recently, he led the academic team in securing the largest capital investment in the university’s history — the Advanced Medical Research Centre — which will catalyze discoveries in healthcare treatment and support their commercialization.

Sylvain Charbonneau holds an MSc in physics from the University of Ottawa and a PhD in photonics and semiconductor physics from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C. Before joining the University of Ottawa in 2013 as Associate Vice-President, Research, he worked at the Institute for Microstructural Sciences at the National Research Council (NRC) for more than 20 years. 

During his time at NRC, he was an adjunct professor at six Canadian universities, trained several graduate students, published more than 180 papers and filed numerous patents. Along with three colleagues, he also co-founded a spin-off company — Optenia Inc. — that focused on novel optical communications technology.

Catherine Beaudry

Professor Beaudry holds the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Innovation Management and Economics at Polytechnique Montréal and leads the Partnership for the Organization of Innovation and New Technologies (4POINT0). A Rhodes Scholar with a Ph.D. in economics from Oxford, her research focuses on innovation networks, industrial clusters, and the commercialization of research. She is a member of the SSHRC Board of Directors and Programs Committee. Her participation provides the forum with an authentic and active academic voice in research on innovation ecosystems, directly addressing the central assertion of the call for engaged research.

Bernie Derible

Former Deputy Minister and retired Senior military officer with over 35 years of dynamic adaptive management and leadership experience, working with senior leaders in government, business, non-profit, emergency preparedness, disaster mitigation, and civil-military operations. From war zones to board rooms to the corridors of political leadership, he has successfully led flag ship nation building initiatives across a myriad of complex and demanding situations both domestically and internationally to include pandemic response, border security, refugee resettlement, disaster and emergency response, COIN, human resource initiatives, anti-corruption programs, and organizational and executive leadership development programs.

Bernie is a distinguished graduate from the US Command and General Staff College and his nation building success and global emergency management and preparedness leadership has been recognized globally. He is a highly qualified and experienced professional who combines extensive real-world experience across dozens of countries with resourceful, innovative and practical planning to create the right solutions for the most challenging needs in any location.