Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable committee members. It's a pleasure to be here addressing a committee that's taken up the important work of thinking broadly about science in Canada.
I'll say a word about myself. I'm from Deep River, Ontario, just up the river. I'm a theoretical physicist educated in Canada and the United States. Currently I'm the director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
What is Perimeter? Perimeter is an independent research centre devoted to theoretical physics research, training and outreach. The institute was founded through the generosity and vision of Mike Lazaridis, inventor of the BlackBerry, the world's first smart phone.
When I first met Mike, he was passionately interested in the future. He wanted to help catalyze the breakthroughs that would shape the world of our grandchildren's grandchildren. He realized that theoretical physics was the smartest area he could invest in to make those breakthroughs happen. It didn't require massive infrastructure, yet it changed technology over and over again. The discovery of quantum mechanics, for example, led to the transistor, which led to Silicon Valley, which created literally trillions of dollars of value and changed our society.
Perimeter was created to focus on the deepest problems in fundamental physics, the moon shots. Successive federal and provincial governments as well as private donors have all recognized Perimeter's strategic value and have invested in us. Our funders all understand that theoretical physics is a low-cost, high-impact investment for advancing all of science and technology.
In just 20 years, Perimeter has measurably increased Canada's international standing in physics. We're ranked as a top centre in the world. In fact, the 2021 Nature Index rated Perimeter as Canada's highest-performing independent research institution.
Perimeter has catalyzed the “quantum valley”, a rapidly growing quantum ecosystem in the Waterloo-Toronto corridor. We've trained over 1,000 young researchers, and our educational outreach programs reach tens of thousands of students and teachers across Canada every year.
How has Perimeter done it? There are many things that make Perimeter stand out and that make us different, but I want to focus on one critical factor: talent. We've always been uncompromising in recruiting at the very highest levels. We don't hire based on quotas but on opportunities. We look for daring, brilliant young minds that match the ambition of the institute, people who want to make breakthroughs and who are willing to take risks.
When I think about Perimeter, I think about the people. Briefly, hopefully you'll now see three pictures that exemplify Perimeter's approach.
In the first picture on the top left, there's the CHIME telescope out in Penticton, B.C. CHIME has been called the world's first software telescope, and the brains behind that software is Perimeter researcher Kendrick Smith. Kendrick's algorithms have enabled CHIME to pick out faint signals from an enormous data stream in real time. His work has literally vaulted Canada to the forefront of radio astronomy in the world.
The next picture on the top right is perhaps a familiar image, Avery Broderick. One of the first things Avery did when he joined Perimeter was host a conference where he and his friends convinced the leaders of a dozen radio telescopes around the world to create a new collaboration called the Event Horizon Telescope, or EHT. Avery was confident that the EHT could do something that many thought was impossible. We were confident in Avery, so we invested in a few more conferences, some graduate students, some post-docs and some computational resources. The payoff in 2019 was that Avery was one of the four lead EHT scientists who unveiled the world's first image of a black hole. It was a remarkable technological achievement, one that has really transcended science now and reached out and touched humanity.
On the bottom at the far right, we have a young researcher from The Pas up in Manitoba, Roger Melko. Roger really kicked off a firestorm in his field with research combining machine learning and quantum matter. To support and amplify his work, we created the Perimeter Institute quantum intelligence lab.
We call it “PIQuIL”. Again, our investment was small: some space, some graduate students and some post-docs. What PIQuIL is doing is unique. It brings together researchers from academia, quantum start-ups and the government. There are now several copycat institutes in the U.S. and Europe trying to do the same thing.
In the five years that we've had PIQuIL, they've made major discoveries and in fact have spun out two start-ups, one headed by Estelle Inack, the woman to Roger's left. Estelle gave up an incredible offer from Microsoft down in the States because she thought she could do more interesting work right here at Perimeter.
In each of these cases, what makes this possible isn't scale; it's investing in exceptional talent. It's finding brilliant and daring young minds, giving them a secure home, equipping them with the right resources and inspiring them to take on the biggest challenges.
Thank you very much.