BlueDot’s Kamran Khan Receives Governor General’s Innovation Award

The 2018 Governor General’s Innovation Awards winners have been announced and the winners represent some of the brightest minds in Canada.

Among the recipients is Kamran Khan, CEO and founder of BlueDot. The Toronto company is striving to build the world’s first global early warning system to continuously anticipate and assess risks from dangerous diseases. They can then distribute insights into prevention and treatment for any potential breakouts.

“Using geographic information systems, natural language processing and artificial intelligence, the multidisciplinary team at BlueDot has been able to predict the worldwide spread of influenza, and track the spread of recent outbreaks, including Ebola and the Zika virus,” a statement from the Governor General’s office reads.

Kamran Khan was nominated by MaRS. The awards look to recognize Canadian individuals, teams and organizations whose exceptional and transformative work help shape the future and positively impact the quality of life for citizens.

BlueDot also took home the Health & Wellness award at this year’s Canadian Innovation Awards.

In total there were six Governor General’s Innovation Awards given out. The other winners included Tom Chau, a University of Toronto engineering professor; the First Nations Finance Authority in Westbank, B.C.; Mary Gordon, founder and president of Roots of Empathy; Gary Kobinger and Xiangguo Qiu, creators of ZMapp; and a Memorial University of Newfoundland research team comprising of Terry-Lynn Young, Sean Connors, Kathleen Hodgkinson and Daryl Pullman.

The awards are given out to those who are nominated and then selected through a rigorous process. The selection committee for the awards included YMCA Canada CEO Peter Dinsdale, Cirque du Soleil CEO Daniel Lamarre, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board chair Heather Munroe-Blum and three others.