Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), University of Toronto’s seed-stage accelerator for futuristic science companies, is to launch a space tech stream targeting the creation of 60 space startups over five years.
The nine-month program, affiliated with Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, aims to foster space technologies including interplanetary transportation, asteroid mining, habitat construction, radiation-resistant materials and launching or propulsion technologies.
Participants could include PhD or master’s level students from academic institutions around the world, including the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies. The deadline for submissions is on August 10.
CDL is currently putting together a network of corporate partners, space agencies, investors and experienced entrepreneurs to provide a contact base for the first intake.
Retired astronaut Chris Hadfield will act as a fellow to the scheme, together with Anousheh Ansari, co-founder of space launch competition Ansari X-Prize, and Christine Tovee, former chief technology officer of aerospace and defence group Airbus’s North America unit.
Founded in 2012, CDL is one of nine University of Toronto accelerators and has since expanded with additional locations at the universities of British Columbia, Calgary, HEC Montréal, Dalhousie and New York.
The space tech program joins existing CDL streams focused on general future tech, artificial intelligence, blockchain, cities, energy, health and quantum computing.
CDL was launched to give science startups a robust business understanding by providing them with mentorship from entrepreneurs and investors. It also offers opportunities to secure funding from exited entrepreneurs, angel investors and VC partners.
Sheret Ross, a venture manager at CDL who will lead the space tech stream, said: “We see a next-generation of space entrepreneurship on the rise. Yet, despite amazing talent in Canada, relatively few of those companies are being created here – we want to change that.”
