Commercialisation Journey : from Waterloo to Queensland

Derek Jouppi a co-founder of Suncayr, a Canadian startup company with a flagship UV indicating sticker that helps you know when your sunscreen is no longer protecting you. The three founders of Suncayr met in their nanotechnology engineering program at the University of Waterloo (Canada), and have been in operation for 4 years since. Derek and his team have won prestigious awards like the James Dyson Award International Runner-Up (2014) and HotDesQ (from Advance Queensland) among 46 other research grants (value >$700k) to commercialize and develop the technology. Prior to Suncayr, Derek worked as an engineer at Facebook Inc (Palo Alto), AMD (Toronto), and Broadcom (Richmond).

Derek's looking to pass on his experience in commercializing science - everything from growing out of a school project, to filing IP, making university partnerships, doing research, winning grants, to the tougher lessons about how to build a team and survive on a $0.00 salary for 3 full years.