A fourth-year student majoring jointly in business and interactive arts and technology at SFU Surrey, Fan will spend much of the next year working with cohorts at Queens University, the University of Waterloo and the University of Toronto – with a $30,000 advance from The Next 36  – to develop a start-up company.

Nine teams of four – 36 students in all from across the country – were recently selected from more than 1,000 students to form the program’s second cohort. A shortlist of 72 recently flew to Toronto for an intensive weekend of interviews with program founds and some of Canada’s top entrepreneurs.

They’ve already begun working remotely on their new businesses with the contest’s co-founders and CEO-level mentors.

Fan hopes to focus on a social enterprise that will help address a community-wide issue. She’s among a group of SFU classmates who earlier developed Home for the Heart, a Mandarin and Cantonese language home care service for the elderly to support their social networks and enable them to remain in their homes longer. They produced the business model as part of a social entrepreneurship course this fall.

“My interest is addressing the bigger social problems we face, such as the underfunding of healthcare. It’s a big responsibility we all share and I think creating social ventures is a more sustainable solution,” says Fan, who earlier set up the Burnaby Hospital Bedside Arts Program. It seeks to improve the experience of patients through art and music.

Fan’s ideas involve creating meaningful user experiences through new products and services. She is also working with Engineers Without Borders (and is co-president of the SFU chapter) to create a knowledge management system to be used by chapters across Canada.

A published illustrator, avid photographer, singer, and graphic designer, Fan has received multiple awards for her academic and volunteer achievements.

She’s looking forward to working with new colleagues, whose expertise in engineering and nano-engineering will mesh with her technology/business focus.

Championed by founders that include Jimmy Pattison and a long list of prominent Canadian business leaders, The Next 36 has been described as an intense “hot-house effort” to stimulate young entrepreneurship in Canada.

All candidates will return to Toronto in May for the Entrepreneurship Institute, an innovation boot camp, where they will build their ventures with guidance from the world’s top faculty and support from Canada’s top business leaders and entrepreneurs.

SIAT is a vibrant, multidisciplinary programme that integrates the arts, design, science and technology. SIAT’s teaching and research draw upon fields ranging from media arts, electronic games, design and information technology. SIAT offers degrees at a bachelor, master and doctoral level.  The School currently enrols about 650 undergraduates and approximately 100 graduate students, some 40 of whom are at the doctoral level. SIAT is located in purpose-built, state-of-the-art classrooms and laboratories at SFU’s Surrey campus.

For further information on the position as well as application directions please visit the position posting on our job board.

space plus a 226-square-foot garage, is the first of its kind to be constructed in vancouver since the City of vancouver passed zoning for laneway housing.

West House welcomed its first tenants in 2011; a year-long experience that will encourage effective use of fewer resources. the Adaptive Living Interface System (ALIS) integrates energy consciousness and device control into daily routines using touch screens throughout the house. ALIS was designed and built by the Human-Centred Systems for Sustainable Living at SFU, led by professors Lyn Bartram and Robert Woodbury.

Built with local BC materials, West House offers all the amenities and technologies that people look for in a new home while being highly passively efficient: insulation exceeds Canadian standards at R-26, and proprietary building methods ensure a continuous thermal envelope with no thermal breaks. In addition, an efficient heat recovery ventilation system reduces heat loss and improves air quality.

West House uses two types of solar energy systems. A thermal system designed by Canadian Solar technologies preheats water for in-floor radiant heating and domestic hot water use. Day4 Energy Solar Photovoltaic panels provide electricity in a grid-tie installation: the house

is fully connected to the grid with a bidirectional net meter that allows it to feed power back into the grid when surplus is produced and use power as it is needed. (Photograph by Keith Henderson)

Russell Taylor, Senior Lecturer for SIAT, interviewed Jan Gehl, a Danish architect and urban consultant for Copenhagen.

Five students from Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology are spending the summer at a Surrey high school, helping turn more than 900 pieces of B.C.’s youth art into a virtual showcase.

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