Mr. Speaker, David received this award while working as the manager of Knowledge Mobilization at MUN’s Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development for his creation of a unique on-line resource and search engine known as Yaffle.ca. This site links community members to the university’s research and research projects, a matchmaking feature that is truly unique about Yaffle.ca. It is considered a Google for universities and there is no other system like it in the world. It took four years to develop this Web site at a cost of $1.2 million and the Web site enables users to search through the summaries of more than 1,100 Memorial University projects and profiles of more than 400 researchers, categorized by expertise and geographic region.

Mr. Speaker, more than fifteen Canadian and Australian universities have shown interest in piloting Yaffle. This site has placed graduate students in MUN’s Engineering and Biochemistry departments, and has drawn attention from students as far away as Nigeria, India, China, and even from some of the most prestigious American universities such as Yale. Mr. Yetman is confident that it will be moving on to the national and international stage in the near future.

I ask my colleagues in the House of Assembly to join me in extending congratulations to David Yetman on his brilliant innovation and to congratulate him on his new position with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research in Toronto, Ontario as their Director of Research Programs and Knowledge Transfer.