Closing the Computing Gap: What It Really Takes to Turn Canadian Research Into Real-World Impact

In this episode of Research Spotlight, we speak with Kama Szereszewski, Professor & Program Director of the Master of Biotechnology program at Carleton University and CEO/Founder of a Biotechnology incubator, about the state of Canadian research computing.

Every great discovery starts in a lab. But somewhere between the breakthrough and the boardroom, a lot of promising Canadian science quietly stalls — not for lack of talent, but for lack of infrastructure. That's the story Kama Szereszewski knows better than most.

Szereszewski wears two hats that rarely sit on the same head. By day, she directs the Master of Biotechnology program at Carleton University, training the next generation of scientists to speak the language of business and entrepreneurship. Alongside that, she's the CEO and founder of a medtech deep-tech incubator, helping startups carry their innovations out of the lab and into the market. Few people are better positioned to see exactly where Canada's research pipeline breaks down — and what it would take to fix it.

We sat down with her to talk about capital, computing, and the quiet infrastructure problem that's shaping the future of Canadian science. Her answers point directly to the kind of work Computing for Humanity (CFH) does every day.

The Hidden Barrier: It's Not Just Funding

Ask most people what's holding back Canadian innovation, and they'll say money. Szereszewski agrees — but only up to a point.

"Access to capital is very challenging," she told us, "but there's also access to certain infrastructure." That infrastructure gap is easy to overlook because it doesn't make headlines the way funding rounds do. Yet it's often the deciding factor in whether a discovery ever leaves the lab.

"A lot of STEM-specific innovation requires a lot of storage, a lot of processing, a lot of data," she explained. Researchers mining genomes, sequencing peptides, or working with massive genomic datasets need serious computing muscle — and "those data requirements are only getting higher and higher."

Brain Drain and the Cost of Falling Behind

Canada trains world-class scientific talent. The problem, Szereszewski says, is keeping it. "A lot of that talent is leaving the country" after graduate school — heading to Silicon Valley or Europe, where resources and opportunity are easier to come by. "I think a really big gap is keeping that talent Canadian, and keeping those companies and helping support them so that they can stay here."

That's not just a talent story. It's an infrastructure story. Researchers and startups don't leave because the ideas aren't good enough — they leave because the tools to build on those ideas are easier to access somewhere else.

Why Computing Access Is Becoming as Essential as the Lab Itself

We often talk about laboratory infrastructure — the microscopes, the sequencers, the benches. We talk far less about computing infrastructure, even though it's become just as fundamental. "It's definitely becoming fundamental," Szereszewski said, describing the companies in her network that now need to "process and analyze much larger, higher-order amounts of data" than ever before.

The rise of AI has only accelerated the demand. "With the huge increase in AI lately, a lot more researchers are implementing AI into their daily jobs," she noted — speeding up everything from data processing to prediction modeling. But that acceleration comes with a catch: AI has "created unprecedented demand for computing power," and not every institution, startup, or independent researcher has equal access to it.

This is exactly the gap CFH built MyResearchCloud.ca (MRCA) to close.

Democratizing Research Infrastructure — On Purpose

CFH operates MyResearchCloud.ca, a platform providing affordable cloud computing resources to researchers, nonprofits, and innovators who might otherwise be priced out of the compute power modern science demands. When we asked Szereszewski how important initiatives like this are, her answer was direct: "very important — just because the need, as the computing needs are getting larger and larger... it's becoming more challenging for researchers to access more storage."

Universities and research institutes maintain their own data infrastructure, she noted, but "those needs are getting much higher, and they're increasing quite rapidly." Democratizing that access isn't a nice-to-have anymore — it's becoming a prerequisite for doing competitive research at all.

Security Matters as Much as Access

For early-stage startups especially, computing power alone isn't the whole story — trust is. "The security is a really big factor," Szereszewski said, pointing to how crucial secure data handling is to a young company's R&D process and its ability to attract funding. "Enabling those researchers to actually keep that information in house and secure will be definitely something that will support a lot."

It's a theme she returned to when we asked about the next five years of Canadian research investment: data sovereignty. "That's something that needs to be prioritized," she said, "the access to data and the access to secure data... because healthcare absolutely relies on the storage and access to important proprietary information, or patient information, or huge data sets."

Building the Foundation Academia Needs First

Right now, MRCA's focus is squarely where Szereszewski says the need is most immediate: the academic researchers, graduate students, and postdoctoral scientists who are often the last in line for computing resources. That's by design. Before a platform can meaningfully bridge academia and industry, it has to first give researchers themselves a solid, secure foundation to work from — and that's the tier CFH is building out today.

Szereszewski sees this as the right starting point. Platforms like MRCA, she said, matter most when they "help support early-stage researchers... democratizing that process, increasing the access" — giving people who are still in the lab, not yet in a boardroom, the same caliber of computing power that better-funded institutions take for granted.

The industry bridge is very much part of the vision, and it's one Szereszewski is enthusiastic about: she sees firsthand, through the students she matches with companies in her own program, "a lot of potential synergies between research and industry." But she's equally clear that getting there starts with strengthening the academic base first — giving researchers "more data or more computing power" so that when those industry connections do form, there's real research behind them. It's a sequence, not a shortcut: support the researcher first, and the commercialization opportunities follow naturally from stronger, better-resourced science.

Her Advice to the Next Generation

Asked what she'd tell a junior researcher launching an AI, biotech, or health tech project today, Szereszewski didn't hesitate: scalable cloud computing access "would be very helpful... helping people out right at early stage, showing them what they have access to." For researchers just starting out, simply knowing what computing capacity is available to them can change the trajectory of a project.

The Bigger Picture

Szereszewski's closing message doubles as a mission statement for the work CFH does every day: research institutions need the ability to control their own access to resources and data storage, without unnecessary barriers standing between them and meaningful industry collaboration down the line. "That data sharing... needs to be very well done and well organized, but it needs to be done," she said. "Enabling that sharing of information and those collaborative efforts would be really pivotal."

That's the gap Computing for Humanity exists to close — starting with researchers, nonprofits, and academic innovators, and giving them affordable, secure access to the computing power that modern discovery requires, through MyResearchCloud.ca. Because the next breakthrough shouldn't stall out for lack of storage.

Want to hear more from researchers and innovators like Kama Szereszewski? Subscribe to the CFH YouTube channel for the full interview series, and follow us on social media for more stories at the intersection of science, technology, and human impact. To learn how your lab or nonprofit can access affordable research computing, visit MyResearchCloud.ca.