Peter Hackett is currently Executive Professor in the School of Business, Special Advisor to the Vice-president Research and a Fellow of the National Institute for Nanotechnology at the University of Alberta.
Recently, he was President and CEO of the Alberta Ingenuity Fund. He came to Ingenuity in 2004 and grew the organization at a compound annual growth rate of 30% per year focusing its investments in provincial priorities in nanotechnology, prion research, water research, and the development of knowledge-based industries.
Prior to relocating to Alberta, he was the Vice-President, Research at the National Research Council of Canada where he directed the corporate strategies for emerging technologies, entrepreneurship and technology clusters. His key portfolios included biotechnologies, information and telecommunications, manufacturing and molecular sciences, as well as leading the development of national measurement standards. As part of his work in guiding Canada’s role in the emerging field of nanotechnology, he was the NRC executive responsible for bringing the National Institute for Nanotechnology to the University of Alberta. He has also been an Adjunct Professor in Chemistry at the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Toronto.
Dr. Hackett currently participates in guiding several national projects, including serving on the Member Council of Sustainable Development Technologies Canada, as a board member with the Institute Advisory Board for the Institute of Genetics for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, as a board member for the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, as a member of the advisory board of the Maurice Young Centre for the Study for Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship at UBC, and as a member of the Dean of Science’s Advisory Committee at UBC. He is also a member of the advisory board of Partners in Research, the Holmes Award, and acts as a Trustee of the Steacie Memorial Foundation.
During his work as a chemical physicist, he authored over 200 publications including 11 patents in photochemistry, the use of lasers in chemistry, and in nanotechnology. He is also a Fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada, the Chemical Society of London, and has been a Visiting Fellow of the Science and Technology Agency of Japan.
Honors
- Rutherford Medal in Chemistry of the Royal Society of Canada
- Noranda Lecture Award of the Chemical Institute of Canada
- Canada Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer
- Alberta Centennial Medal
- Named one of four 125th Anniversary Specially Elected Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada, 2007
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