FOUNDERS & PHYSICISTS
Founders & Physicists is a unique series of fireside chats that brings together world-class researchers and entrepreneurs from Waterloo Region and beyond. Each evening will feature a remarkable Palestinian dinner and a founder’s story with opportunities to meet amazing leaders and have fun conversations. It is also a chance to create space for founders and physicists to learn from each other and discuss the future of Canadian innovation.
Rahul Goel
Founder & CEO, NordSpace
Rahul Goel is a Canadian aerospace engineer, serial entrepreneur, and visionary founder on a mission to give Canada sovereign access to space. He is the Founder and CEO of NordSpace, a next-generation rocket company building Canadian-designed launch vehicles, engines, and spaceport infrastructure to enable domestic orbital launches for the first time in the nation’s history.
Founded in 2022, NordSpace is developing a vertically integrated launch system—including the Taiga and Tundra rockets and a commercial spaceport in Newfoundland and Labrador—to support satellite deployment, national security, scientific research, and Canada’s long-term leadership in the global space economy. Rahul’s bold goal: deliver Canada’s long-awaited “Apollo moment.”
Beyond NordSpace, Rahul is a repeat founder who has built and scaled multiple technology companies while pursuing a PhD in aerospace engineering at the University of Toronto. His journey blends deep technical excellence with entrepreneurial grit—making him a powerful role model for Canadian youth, ambition, and world-class innovation.
Dr. Avery Broderick
Professor, University of Waterloo
Research Associate Faculty, Perimeter Institute
Dr. Avery Broderick is a globally recognized theoretical astrophysicist, Professor at the University of Waterloo, and researcher at Perimeter Institute, where he helps lead humanity’s effort to understand the universe’s most extreme objects: black holes.
A founding member of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, Avery helped make possible one of the defining scientific achievements of our time, the first-ever image of a black hole, captured in 2019 at the centre of the galaxy M87. His work combines general relativity, high-energy astrophysics, advanced imaging, and global telescope networks to test how gravity behaves at the very edge of spacetime.
Through his research, Avery transforms the invisible into the observable, giving us a new way to see the cosmos. Avery brings the other half of the space frontier: while rockets push humanity outward, black hole science reveals what awaits at the deepest edges of the universe.
FOUNDERS & PHYSICISTS
AUGUST 12, 2026, 5:30 PM
Kitchener-Waterloo
Founders & Physicists is a unique series of fireside chats that brings together world-class researchers and entrepreneurs from Waterloo Region and beyond. Each evening will feature a remarkable Palestinian dinner and a founder’s story with opportunities to meet amazing leaders and have fun conversations. It is also a chance to create space for founders and physicists to learn from each other and discuss the future of Canadian innovation.
Schedule
Sponsors
Community Partners
