DAL MAGAZINE
When Michelle Lehman (BSc’18) graduated with an occupational therapy degree in 2020, she didn’t feel quite ready to start serving patients due to COVID-related interruptions in her studies. Instead, she pivoted.
She joined ’s International Chronic and Complex Conditions Research lab as a research occupational therapist and began looking at a fatigue management program developed by the lab’s principal investigator, Dr. Tanya Packer. That’s when inspiration struck.
“There were clinicians reaching out to the lab because they had read about the program and wanted to be trained in it to help patients manage long COVID,” Lehman says. “We didn’t know how to meet the degree of demand we were seeing, so we started brainstorming and came up with the idea for a web-based network to deliver training.”
That put Lehman on the path to . “I was just trying to figure out how to meet a need,” she says.
Michelle Lehman (BSc’18).
Building individuals who innovate
For years, has offered programs that promote and support innovation and entrepreneurship. In 2020, the university brought them together to create one dynamic hub — Dal Innovates. It’s become a beacon for post-secondary students, faculty, and recent graduates across the region who have ideas for promising new products and services but no way to develop them. Through engagement with peers, programs, and carefully curated teams of mentors, Dal Innovates participants build the skills and the mindset to bring those ideas to life as innovators, creators, and entrepreneurs.
“The world is becoming more complex,” says Jeff Larsen, assistant vice president innovation and entrepreneurship at (pictured in the opening photo).
We’re facing everything from health challenges and climate change to rising inflation. We need more people who have the capacity to take on these issues. Through our programs, we help people gain the competencies to do that. —Jeff Larsen
Dal Innovates offers two core suites of programs: Collide (Discover, Validate, Launch) caters to undergraduate students and Lab2Market (Discover, Validate, Launch, and Build) works with graduate students from Dal and universities across the country. But Dal Innovates is also part of a broad innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem. It includes five Faculty-based sandboxes designed for exploring ideas as well as regional business incubators and accelerators such as the and the .
Dal Innovates Director, Meghann Coleman.
“What makes Dal Innovates unique is that it is really focused on building up the individuals,” explains Director Meghann Coleman. “We want them to have resiliency, adaptability, and a growth mindset. They don’t have to use those skills to become entrepreneurs. They can take them back to the lab to advance their research, they can go into government, or even academia.”
Validating a promising idea
Accepted into the Validate program, Lehman says she was delighted to discover that she was part of a cohort dedicated to women in research.
There were participants with PhDs in areas like microbiology, engineering, and physics. We were all experiencing our first taste of entrepreneurship, working together, and celebrating each other. —Michelle Lehman
With $15,000 in funding, Lehman conducted 100 customer discovery interviews to develop her business idea further, which inspired her to think about a different path forward.
“We learned that the Packer Managing Fatigue Program is just one piece of the puzzle that our customers need,” she says. “They’re also looking for solutions for managing chronic disease more broadly. We started to think, ‘What if our business went beyond one intervention to offer clinicians access to a range of self-management resources and outcome measurement tools?’ ”
The result is , a first-of-its-kind, one-stop internet shop for self-management solutions. Incorporated in 2022, the company started with Dr. Packer’s program and will use its success as a springboard to add other proven self-management tools and create a web portal to deliver these offerings to multiple subscribers.
“The transition to this point would have looked much different and gone much slower if we hadn’t done the Lab2Market program,” Lehman says. “It gave us the momentum to make the leap from research to commercialization.”
Creating paths to success
Jon McGinley says he wishes that Dal Innovates had been there for him when he was starting out. A successful entrepreneur with extensive expertise in start-ups and early-stage companies, he entered the Dal Innovates ecosystem as a guest speaker and was subsequently invited to join the Founder Council network. It curates specialized teams of entrepreneurs, founders, and investors who offer Collide and Lab2Market participants guidance on everything from setting milestones to securing funding.
"It gives participants access to fair and balanced advice from industry," McGinley says. "It also leads to great relationships and connections."
McGinley believes the real value of Dal Innovates is that it allows students and faculty to explore their ideas and learn about the harsh realities of the business world in a safe way. “That will either lead participants to a greater opportunity for success or, equally invaluable, shine a light on the hard work it takes to get there.”
That safety, and a growing array of success stories, is generating strong interest in Dal Innovates programming, and not just from potential participants. Earlier this year, the university received a $32-million grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to expand the Lab2Market suite to more than 50 Canadian universities, colleges, and research hospitals. This expansion will help unlock the commercial potential of $7.8 billion in collective annual research funding.
“With this funding, Lab2Market is poised to reach thousands more researchers and students across Canada, accelerating the path from research to real-world impact,” says Larsen. “We’re building a national community of innovation — one that transforms discoveries into ventures that serve people, industries, and communities.”
Realizing potential
Meanwhile, Larsen and his colleagues are expanding the Collide suite of programming to 10 institutions throughout Atlantic Canada, thanks to the support of the Province of Nova Scotia and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. The goal is to train each institution in delivering the program so that they can offer it independently, with Dal Innovates serving as both a regional hub for their efforts and as a source of support where needed.
Ibrahim Haddad (BEng’25), who has been accepted into the Collide Validate program, represents the kind of potential entrepreneur that will benefit from the expansion of the Collide initiative. His business idea, Your Academic Choice (YAC), aims to connect high school students with university mentors for guidance on academic paths.
Ibrahim Haddad (BEng’25).
“The main thing I am looking forward to is developing the skill set I need to start the business and the customer discovery interviews, which will help me shape it,” says Haddad. “All that is essential, but I also want to know how to raise awareness about YAC. I’m certain that the program will help me do that.”
For Michelle Lehman, the potential that brought her into the Dal Innovates ecosystem is now being realized. Think Self Management is working with lawyers on an intellectual property strategy and has hired its fourth employee. A new website launched, and a mobile health app is in the works that will enable individuals to monitor their symptoms. “We know from evidence that self-management as a treatment approach leads to better quality of life and health outcomes,” she says.
Lehman continues to benefit from the skills and connections Dal Innovates gave her. One of her mentors is on the company’s advisory board, giving her access to entrepreneurial expertise that will help her achieve further growth and success. She also has access to other initiatives in the Dal Innovates ecosystem should she ever need them.
"We want to be the go-to for evidence-based tools for managing chronic disease," Lehman says. "It’s good to know that as we work toward achieving that, we can still reach out to Dal Innovates when we need help."
Get in touch
Share your feedback on our first digital issue! We'd also love to hear what you would like to see next.
Read more from the Fall 2025 issue
Editor
Alison DeLory
Editorial Committe
Alison DeLory
Allison Langille
Matt Reeder
Andrew Riley
Mail
PO BOX 15000
Halifax, Nova Scotia
B3H 4R2