TRLabs Appoints CEO

June 01, 2009 -- Edmonton – TRLabs has named Robert Tasker, an executive with 23 years of information and communications technology (ICT) leadership experience, as President & CEO of TRLabs. The appointment is effective immediately. The position will be located in Calgary. Robert comes to TRLabs from TELUS, where he spent the last decade in a Vice President capacity spanning several business functions.

"Robert's executive experience and working relationships with industry, government and academia will strongly contribute to meeting TRLabs' goals," said Brian Eckhardt, Chair, TRLabs. "Robert’s background will be key in moving TRLabs more towards an industry driven model that identifies industry research, development, and commercialization needs, and meet them." 

Eckhardt noted that global competition, market shift to applications and vertical markets, and accelerated product development cycles have sharpened industry research and development requirements in the ICT sector in recent years. In response, Eckhardt is confident that Robert's skill set will accelerate TRLabs' ongoing activities to create service offerings and a research program that is responsive to changing industry need, but makes the productive connections between industry, government, and academia that delivers solid return on investment for all TRLabs partners.

Recent TRLabs operational adjustments have included expanded eHealth research activity, a technology development mandate expansion, creation of eHome and eHealth technology demonstration environments at TRLabs facilities, initiation of 14 contract development projects with industry in the last year, continued re-positioning of the research program around emergent vertical markets, and more flexible intellectual property policy.

Robert succeeds Jeff Rohne, who will remain with the organization as Interim VP Industry Services until a permanent appointment to the position is made.

About Robert Tasker
Robert has 23 years of information and communications technology experience in progressively more senior management positions spanning Marketing, Operations and Sales Engineering functions within Nortel, Bell Canada, Stentor Resource Centre, and TELUS. Leadership includes 10 years managing complex teams from 20 up to 1500 people, and leading organizational transformation, revenue creation and/or operational cost reduction in areas including process re-engineering, workflow process transformation, company acquisition and integration, new service introduction, and building and managing of internal business units. For the last decade, Robert has held Vice-President positions at TELUS in International & Carrier Services, Partner Solutions Marketing, Business Networks Product Marketing, and most recently Senior Vice President – National Service and IT Operations. Robert also has independent entrepreneurial experience, spending three years as Founder and President of a software start-up eventually sold to a communications company. Robert has an M.B.A. from York University and a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

About TRLabs
TRLabs is a tri-partite, not-for-profit applied research information and communication technology consortium with an industry-led pre-competitive research and development program. TRLabs fast tracks innovation to market by creating innovative technologies, training students, and working with its partners to accelerate technology commercialization. Labs in Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Regina, and Winnipeg employ 249. With 71 partner members representing a unique synergy of industry, government, and university, technology and applications research focuses on three research themes: Connected Media; eHealth; and eHome. In its 23-year existence, TRLabs has trained 889 highly skilled university graduates, created 342 technologies adopted for use by companies, and generated 78 active patents (issued or filed).

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