Completing a master’s or doctorate in today’s environment, requires grit. Over the past year in particular, your journey has most likely been strewn with many new challenges that you have successfully overcome. Hats off! You are models of adaptation, resilience and perseverance, and you instill the pride of the entire INRS community.
I am particularly happy to be among you to celebrate the first anniversary of the INRS Foundation. Created in May 2020, it is dedicated to accelerating the development of INRS and highlighting its graduates.
Over the past year, our small team conducted three successful campaigns to support student success, in collaboration with the entire INRS community. This enabled us to award more than $65,000 in prizes and emergency financial assistance to INRS students.
We also showcased the achievements and backgrounds, showcased and highlighted the successes of some thirty graduates. It has been a renewed pleasure to interact with them and to tell their inspiring stories. Their backgrounds are all different, but the common thread is their leveraging their scientific training to seize career opportunities that are each more exciting than the next, whether they closely or indirectly touch upon their area of studies.
I take this opportunity to congratulate the recipients of the Prix Lumières Awards and prizes for the best master’s theses and best doctoral dissertations in each of our four centers. This is the second time that the Foundation has presented these honours and I must say that the level has been quite high and the process particularly energizing. I hope you will find them most inspiring and that their stories encourages you to move forward and to tell us your own story.
In short, the INRS Foundation is your foundation, it exists through, for, and with you. This is why I invite you to update your contact details and keep in touch with us in order to benefit from the strength of a network of some 3,400 graduates who, like you, are putting science to work to contribute every day to the economic, social and cultural development of our society.
Cheers! I look forward to meeting you again very soon,
Élise Comtois
Director of Philanthropic Development and Alumni Relations, leading the INRS Foundation