Canada trains some of the best AI researchers in the world. Shabnam Haghzare’s job is making sure they stay here.
Growing up in Iran, her natural curiosity led her to study electrical engineering, even as people around her suggested that “engineering isn’t really a fit for girls.” She pursued it anyway.
“The ingredients are there. It’s a matter of pulling it all together.”
Shabnam Haghzare, Mitacs
Today, as Senior Advisor and National AI Lead at Mitacs, Haghzare is helping create the pathways she once had to navigate herself.
She leads efforts to connect Canada’s brightest AI researchers with the businesses that need them most.
Haghzare sees Mitacs as the kind of organization she’s always wanted to exist: a connector linking industry, academia, and the next generation of talent.
That connector role is especially important in Canada, where the challenge is keeping AI talent, not producing it. Despite being home to world-class universities and globally recognized researchers, Canada is facing an AI brain drain, which AI Minister Evan Solomon recently called a “crisis moment.”
The risk is that skilled people leave to pursue opportunities elsewhere, and that Canadian-born companies continue to be sold to foreign giants.
For Haghzare, the solution is systemic. “The ingredients are there. It’s a matter of pulling it all together,” she said.
Mitacs brings together enterprises and researchers, providing access to highly skilled talent and much-needed funding to accelerate innovation. The organization also provides support to researchers who want to build companies of their own.
“Pre-seed and early-stage companies struggle with access to capital, what’s often called the valley of death,” Haghzare said. “Mitacs works to support entrepreneurs coming out of academia with scientifically backed ideas, helping them survive that stage, grow, and eventually attract later-stage capital.”
Mitacs itself has been around for 25 years, but its impact has accelerated in the last decade. Since 2018, the organization has supported more than 11,000 enterprise partners and 46,000 interns, resulting in over 35,000 innovation projects and $1.42 billion invested in research and development. Of that, more than $174.4 million has been directed specifically toward AI-related projects.
Mitacs interns bring advanced research skills and expertise to help companies solve real-world challenges. Each intern is supported by a faculty researcher and paired with an industry partner that needs their specialized knowledge to complete an innovation project.
Projects typically run for at least four months but can stretch through the course of an entire postsecondary degree, and at least 31 percent of the time, interns are hired by partners to stay on full-time.
“The capital support helps, of course; that’s added value. But the real barrier to entry is getting high-level talent, which is what Mitacs helps drive,” Haghzare said.
When Mitacs places researchers inside companies, everyone gains, according to Haghzare. Businesses get the research they need to innovate. Academia advances through new discoveries and published work. And the interns themselves become part of a talent pipeline that feeds directly into Canada’s innovation economy.
Mitacs sees strong alignment between its own approach and Canada’s broader AI ambitions. The Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy, now in its second phase, is focused on closing the gap between research and real-world application, making sure Canadian ideas are commercialized and scaled here at home. Haghzare said Mitacs plays a critical role in turning that vision into reality.
The outcomes speak for themselves. Former Mitacs interns have gone on to lead entire departments at the very companies where they were once placed. Others have contributed to life-changing medical breakthroughs. Mahla Abdolahnejad, who joined healthtech startup Skinopathy through a Mitacs placement, helped train the company’s AI model to detect skin cancer in people of colour, and now works there full-time as a data scientist.
In another initiative with FluidAI, Mitacs supported a team of student founders from the University of Waterloo in developing an AI-powered bedside monitor that detects life-threatening post-operative complications in real-time, a solution now used in multiple regions worldwide.
“Mitacs is proven in attracting, developing, and deploying top AI talent, and helping Canada retain it. By strengthening the talent pipeline and forging high-impact partnerships, we’re accelerating Canada’s AI agenda and global competitiveness,” Haghzare said.
Haghzare believes Canada’s real opportunity lies in its people. If researchers are given the chance to stay and build here, she says, their work can ripple outward.
PRESENTED BY
Mitacs helps companies accelerate innovation through top talent and strategic research partnerships. Discover how.
Feature image provided by FluidAI.