Next winter, Whistler Blackcomb and Canadian Wilderness Adventures will become some of the first companies to offer electric snowmobiles to clients. The machines are made by Quebec-based Taiga Motors, which built on its first-place finish in the 2016 McGill Dobson Cup’s Innovation Track to expand its technology and develop a revolutionary all-electric snowmobile from the ground up.

Startup Saccade Analytics was the first place winner of the 2017 McGill Dobson Cup Health Sciences Track. The team’s pitch involved analyzing eye and head movement to help diagnose neural diseases. The team sat down with the Dobson Chronicles to talk about what made them dive into the entrepreneurial life, and eye-head movement as an indicator of disease — including, but not limited to, concussion. The team’s work builds on a foundation laid by team member Professor Mimi Galiana, who is a pioneer in the field.

Now in its fourth edition, Corporate Knights’ Future 40 ranking is a yearly roundup of companies and organizations that are transitioning towards a low-carbon future. The list heavily reflects Ontario-based companies and utilities, but there is also a lot of representation from Canada’s mining sector and medium-sized oil and gas producers, all of which are pivoting towards greater sustainability in their production processes.

A joint McGill-Concordia effort has won a $50,000 federal grant to bring its innovative row-house design to the International Solar Decathlon in China next year. TeamMTL’s design takes aim at the growing affordable-urban-housing crisis, successfully marrying energy efficiency and sustainability with comfort and affordability.

In an interview on Fox Business Network, Aspire CEO and former MBA student Mohammed Ashour makes the case for eating bugs as a way to meet the world’s growing protein requirements. His company, the Aspire Group, runs a cricket farm in Texas and a palm weevil larvae operation in Ghana, both aimed at creating a sustainable insect-based food industry. Mr. Ashour says that both insects are “extremely nutritious, and have a high amount of protein, iron and other micro-nutrients; and utilize an extraordinarily low amount of resources to produce.”

West Vancouver-based PNG Gold has announced the appointment of Wesley Marstaller (BCom'05) as Executive Vice President of the corporation. Before coming on board at PNG Gold, Mr. Marstaller served in several capacities at the Macquarie Group, then as COO of the Rennie Group. PNG Gold CEO Greg Clarkes praises Mr. Marstaller, saying that his expertise will help with “building the management group necessary to achieve the Company’s near and long term goals.”

PNG Gold is a mining company specialized in gold exploration in Papua New Guinea. 

A recent Forbes book review delves into James Rickards’ The Road to Ruin: The Global Elites’ Secret Plan For The Next Financial Crisis, which makes the case that there is a big-ticket financial collapse coming, one that dwarfs the 2008 recession. Rickards lays much of the blame on macroeconomics, drawing a parallel between it and astrology.