The University of Waterloo today announced that global life science company, PerkinElmer, has relocated its Canadian demonstration lab to Velocity Garage.
“Access to scientific instruments and solutions for startups is often difficult.”
The move will give startups, entrepreneurs, and scientists in the incubator early access to PerkinElmer’s life science lab instruments and software, as well as experts. The relocation is set to be completed sometime in April and will also give the US-based company a place to host customers and demo products.
“Access to scientific instruments and solutions for startups is often difficult because early-stage companies don’t yet have the capital to purchase them,” said Adrien Côté, Velocity’s science lead and business advisor.
Côté, who also supports and advises many of Velocity’s deep tech and deep science companies, noted that entrepreneurs will now be able to use those technologies to help accelerate products and with business development.
The Velocity incubator is home to a number of deep tech companies that often work, and rely on, sciences surrounding biology, chemistry, or physics. The University of Waterloo stated that this partnership will not only provide early access to the instruments needed for these projects, but also help it become more attractive to future or potential clients.
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“Putting our Canadian customer lab into a leading incubator like Velocity is a natural fit. We look forward to bringing our passion for science to the community there, and to connecting with Velocity entrepreneurs as they help shape the future of work and life,” said Tim Freeman, Canadian regional sales manager of PerkinElmer.
“PerkinElmer is all about innovating to create a better world, be that in maternal and infant health, rare disease study, pharmaceutical advancement, food safety and quality, or environmental testing and more,” he noted.
This is PerkinElmer’s second move into the Waterloo region community. In 2016, the company launched its software innovation lab in Kitchener’s Communitech Hub. The LeanLab, as it is called, was the company’s first innovation lab outside of its hometown, Cambridge, Mass.
Abdul Al-Haimi, PerkinElmer’s Software Innovation Lab lead, told Communitech at the time that it chose the location for its second innovation lab because of “the unique sense of community around here, and the ability and opportunity to work alongside big companies and tons of innovative startups and bright minds.”
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Jay Shah, director of Velocity, noted that this new partnership will expand “the breadth and depth” of the product development capabilities of Velocity’s startups.
“The use and popularity of our existing product development labs, testing, and fabrication equipment at Velocity is already nothing short of astounding in terms of what it allows early-stage startups to accomplish,” Shah stated, noting, however, that Velocity’s entrepreneurs will have greater leverage with state-of-art PerkinElmer tools to help build high-impact, globally competitive products, and companies.
Image courtesy University of Waterloo
