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| President of PAVAC, Ralf Edinger (left) receiving
the Innovation Award 2010 of Richmond Chamber of Commerce's Business Excellence Awards. |
PAVAC Industries Incorporated, a Richmond-based company that works closely with TRIUMF on accelerator technology, is the winner of the 2010 Richmond Chamber of Commerce, Innovation Award.
“When we look at a company, we consider where it started off, where it is today, and where it will be tomorrow,” says the Executive Director of the Richmond Chamber of Commerce, Craig R. Jones. Craig was one of the judges for the 2010 Innovation Award, Jones added that the competition for the Innovation Award was very intense this year and that the decision was very difficult to make as the finalists and their work were all at the cutting edge of their fields. To Jones, the work that is done by PAVAC Industries Incorporated is “revolutionary; globally recognized and a competitive achievement.”
PAVAC Industries is a Richmond-based company that focuses on developing industrial hybrid electron beam technology. The president of PAVAC Industries, Ralf Edinger has taken incredible risks to achieve his goals. As a young ambitious scientist with knowledge of the superconducting acceleration realm, Ralf felt that his ideas would not be able to fully develop in his home country of Germany.
Craig explained, “It was in the Vancouver area, the place that had the programs that allowed [Ralf’s] dreams to come to the forefront.” Ralf arrived in 1998 and started PAVAC Industries Incorporated. In about a decade, the Canadian company was recommended by the City of Richmond and won the Innovation Award 2010. Although the accomplishment of Ralf and PAVAC is excellent in the field, being awarded this distinction was a surprise to them as they did not intend to compete for the Award.
TRIUMF and PAVAC Industries’ forged a relationship in 2005, collaborating on producing two prototype superconducting radiofrequency accelerator cavities. Three years later, on April 14, 2008, a team of BC scientists and engineers formed by TRIUMF and PAVAC Industries announced they were now one of the very few groups in the world that carried the knowledge of ultra-sophisticated superconducting accelerator technology.
“We had the technology and what TRIUMF furthered was to put this technology into applications,” said Ralf. This technology is being developed as the next-generation of accelerators with applications in the fields of health care, environmental mitigation and remediation, advanced materials science, and high-energy physics, all benefitting numerous individuals in multiple diversities. Such a significant achievement registered Canada as one of the only six countries in the world with this capability.
When Ralf was interviewed in 2008 for the achievement, he talked about PAVAC Industries’ work in developing the accelerator and electron-beam technology in Vancouver, saying “Our goal is a continuous and systematic improvement of this process as applied to our particle-beam technology in order to make Vancouver a global centre for accelerator and electron-beam technology.”
This confident sense of self-identity and belonging of Ralf was consistent and in 2011 when he reassured that, “there are about five to six different companies with the knowledge of this technology; but, we are from Richmond, BC.”
Ralf has found the persistent effort required to develop Vancouver’s accelerator and electron-beam technology is highly rewarding, and that working with TRIUMF increased the recognition of PAVAC Industries. Currently, the majority of their current business is based on international export. Locally, PAVAC Industries and TRIUMF remain in a tight-knit relationship as the process of building TRIUMF’s flagship facility, the Advanced Rare IsotopE Laboratory (ARIEL), is now in progress, continuing the journey of “Accelerating Science for Canada”.
Congratulations to PAVAC Industries Incorporated, the winner of the Richmond Chamber of Commerce, Innovation Award 2010.
- By Angus Ng, Outreach Assistant