Delivering prosperity is goal of business-savvy scientist

Dr. Gary Albach

The new president and CEO of Alberta Innovates Technology Futures brings with him a strong background in both science and business.
Trained as a physicist, Dr. Gary Albach ran a successful spin-off company focused on semiconductors and advanced materials.
Now Albach will have a staff of 700 at Technology Futures. This new corporation amalgamates the Alberta Research Council, Alberta Ingenuity, iCORE and nanoAlberta.
He says, “Our job is to deliver prosperity in the province through the commercialization of Alberta technologies. That means supporting businesses in the province through the variety of tools that we have from funding through product development in our facilities.”
Albach sees Alberta’s Technology strategy focused on three pillars: energy and environment, health and bio solutions.
“Now, in addition to those, there are platform technologies that are evolving, evolving quickly in the province. And the first of those are nanotechnology, information and communication technologies, ICT, and genomics.”

Reclamation Pioneer Terry Macyk Retires

Terry Macyk

After 43 years with the Alberta Research Council, now called Alberta Innovates Technology Futures, Terry Macyk is retiring.
His pioneering work in soil reclamation earned him the title of Distinguished Scientist with ARC along with recognition from all around the world for his contributions to reclamation science.
According to Macyk, time is the most critical factor in evaluating reclamation success. “I think it is just looking more at some of the long term applications in some of the areas that we’ve worked in. You have to do a lot of long term follow-up on many of the things that we did do, just to make sure that everything is on the right path and to confirm that indeed, the reclamation that was done in the past is going to stand that longer test of time.”
Macyk goes on to say that looking at a reclaimed landscape after just five years is never enough time to judge one’s success. “Twenty-five years gives you a better idea of how successful it is. Forty years even more. But if would really be nice to be looking at some of these areas 50 years later, because realistically it takes a tree to grow and mature in most parts of Alberta 50, 60, 70 years. We haven’t reached that stage with our initial reclamation yet. It’s a very new science.”
Terry Macyk’s research on reclamation has been applied across Alberta in forestry, agriculture, oil sands, oil and gas development and, now, carbon capture and storage. For example, he helped develop a means to use sludge from pulp mills as a soil amendment. For two decades he collaborated with Syncrude to research effective ways to reclaim boreal landscapes disturbed by oilsands mining.
His pioneering research helped shape regulations for reclaiming industrial sites. And Mayck considers one of his greatest contributions the introduction of the notion of salvaging and stockpiling soil before industrial development even starts. √