MBA Graduate Joins Rotman as Lab Executive Director
At the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, graduation can mean a new position with the school itself, which is exactly what happened to Sonia Sennik.
Sennik recently graduated from the school’s Executive MBA program, according to a press release. Now, she’s joining the business school as the first-ever national Executive Director of the Creative Destruction Lab. She will be working alongside lab founder and Academic Director Ajay Agrawal, the school’s Peter Munk Professor of Entrepreneurship. The lab has been helping science-based business ventures succeed since 2012. It mentors them what they need to know to get past the “seed stage.”
Rotman describes the lab:
“It employs a unique, objectives-focused coaching process to help founders commercialize advances in science and technology. The Lab also provides experiential learning to MBA students through year-long courses where students work alongside the Lab’s Fellows and venture founders, giving them a unique chance to learn how to evaluate, finance, and manage technology businesses.”
“The Creative Destruction Lab is expanding rapidly, both geographically and programmatically. Sonia will provide leadership, vision, and energy to help ensure the success of the Lab and its ventures in the coming years,” Agrawal said in the press release.
Sennik’s held important titles before, too. There’s HATCH, a consulting agency for engineering and construction projects, where she “held senior project and engineering management roles.” She was also the first to receive the Rotman Social Impact Award.
She’ll now help take the lab further, and it’s accomplished lots already. Its graduates prove it. Some of these companies include Atomwise in San Francisco and Kyndi in Palo Alto. This year, the lab expanded to include a program all about quantum machine learning startups.
We’ll see what’s next with Sennik in charge.
Rotman Creative Destruction Lab Partners with Rigetti Computing
The Rotman School of Management in Toronto is working with Rigetti Computing, a quantum computing company, on a new program to develop quantum machine learning software.
The partnership is with the Creative Destruction Lab, in particular, which announced its Quantum Machine Learning Program earlier this year. Now, the lab is building on its already accomplished work in accelerating machine learning startups. Quantum computing is the next step in computing and may prove better than classical computing soon.
“We announced the Quantum Machine Learning Program earlier this year with founding technology partner D-Wave Systems, and since then, the interest from applicants, investors, and technology partners has exceeded our expectations,” said Daniel Mulet, Associate Director of the lab’s program, in a press release. “The partnership with Rigetti expands the options of quantum systems available for algorithm development for the companies in our program.”
Within the program, Rigetti will be offering training for its Forest programming environment, which offers tools for experimental quantum programming.
The Creative Destruction Lab launched at the Rotman School in 2012 and has fostered many successful business leaders since then. including the founders of Kik, Bloomberg Beta, and LocoMobi. The lab received many applications for people interested in taking part in the Quantum Machine Learning Program, choosing 40 individuals and teams to begin in the program starting Sept. 5.
Startups that participate in the program can receive up to $80,000 in pre-seed investment. Rotman’s MBA students will also offer their advice in business development and implementation. The school is merging its business and technology expertise to bring forth a new program that has the ability to change the way computing operates in the modern world.
“Quantum machine learning will power some of the most impactful and exciting near-term applications of quantum computing. The startups at the [lab] are at the leading edge of this technology and will get early access to Rigetti’s general-purpose quantum hardware and to Forest, one of the most sophisticated quantum programming environments in the world,” said Madhav Thattai, Rigetti’s Chief Strategy Officer, in the press release. “We’re looking forward to working with these pioneering individuals and teams to help create and accelerate the quantum application ecosystem.”
