Luc Paquet and Oussama Moutanabbir will serve as executive director and scientific director, respectively, of the future Lassonde Deeptech Institute (Photos: Alex Tran and Caroline Perron). 

In March 2025, Polytechnique Montréal announced a major donation of $50 million from Pierre Lassonde, a Polytechnique alumnus and chairman of its board of directors. The donation will be used to create a research institute that will play a transformative role not only for research at Polytechnique but also for the Canadian economy, generating technologies that will quickly impact society. 

The project is now moving forward with the appointment of its two leading directors, Luc Paquet and Oussama Moutanabbir. They take the reins with a challenging mandate, given the transformative nature of the project, both for Polytechnique and for Canadian society. Their role is to build a world-class research institute with the two-fold mission of training top-drawer scientists and acting as a catalyst for innovation to support Canada’s technological sovereignty. 

Tailor-made roadmap 

Luc Paquet brings with him a track record that combines research promotion and leadership of a number of organizations, so he is well prepared for the challenges ahead. A biochemist by training, he cut his teeth in the biotechnology sector before heading up the Institute of Pharmacology at the Universitḗ de Sherbrooke from 2007 to 2013 and then the research promotion organization TransfertTech Sherbrooke from 2013 to 2018. In 2019, he moved on to another research development organization, Univalor, where he worked until it was dissolved in 2021. Dr. Paquet then returned to industry to take on the role of Chief Executive Officer at Immune Biosolutions, a biotechnology company in the Sherbrooke area. He held this position until very recently. 

According to Dr. Paquet, his varied career path has taught him how to manage small multidisciplinary teams and develop transformative partnerships, both nationally and internationally. It has also given him enviable experience in strategic management and business development, assets that will enable him not only to support the launch of a major institute but also to ensure its structured development and growth within the Quebec and Canadian high-tech ecosystem. 

“Throughout my career, I have had to convert ambitious projects into concrete results,” Dr. Paquet said. “I am confident that I will be able to carry out my mission by drawing on the incredible pool of talented people already working at Polytechnique and the significant resources available to the Institute.” 

The vision takes shape 

Although he plans to conduct a strategic planning exercise in the coming days, Dr. Paquet already has a clear idea of the pillars on which he wants to base the culture of the Lassonde Institute from the very start, particularly its role as a driver of innovation. 

“The important thing will be to develop innovative technologies that meet a specific user need,” he explained. “We won’t just ‘push’ developing technologies toward the more advanced stages of the innovation process; we’ll make sure that we work with partners who will move the technology closer to prototyping, users and society.” 

Does he want to impose a paradigm shift on the usual way of doing things in academic research groups? “Not necessarily,” he answered. “This shift is already underway to some extent, but I am convinced that embodying this cultural change through our actions and personalized support will enable our talented people to make an impact consistent with our mission.” 

To achieve this, the Institute will surround itself with a broad range of experts to ensure that projects remain on an optimal development path and meet milestones that increase their intrinsic value. Specialists in intellectual property, venture capital and product development will join forces with other partners to support Polytechnique’s multidisciplinary teams of engineers and other scientists. According to Dr. Paquet, this approach lies at the core of the Institute’s DNA. 

“My goal is for us all to row in the same direction, harnessing our complementary strengths to build a bold, open and forward-looking institute,” he added. “By pulling together towards the same objective, a united team will always go further than the sum of the individual efforts of the people who make it up.” 

Training the next generation of scientists  

Coincident with Luc Paquet’s appointment, Polytechnique Montréal assigned Oussama Moutanabbir the role of scientific director of the future Lassonde Deeptech Institute. full professor of engineering physics at Polytechnique Montréal, Oussama Moutanabbir has been leading a research program in quantum engineering of semiconductors based on silicon, germanium and tin (Group IV) alloys since 2012.  

Professor Moutanabbir holds a PhD in energy and materials science from the Institut national de recherche scientifique (INRS). He worked at the Max Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics in Halle, Germany, before moving to Japan as a visiting researcher at the RIKEN Institute of Advanced Science. 

At Polytechnique Montréal, he led the work of the Canada Research Chair in Nanoscale and Quantum Semiconductors from 2012 to 2022. He also led a Canada-wide research network on compact photonics in the mid-infrared and terahertz ranges from 2018 to 2023 as part of a project funded by the Canadian Department of National Defence’s Innovation for Defence, Excellence, and Security (IDEaS) program. In 2024, he launched the PolyAPT platform, a unique atomic probe tomography infrastructure in Canada focused on materials science, microelectronics and photonics research. 

Professor Moutanabbir’s work has earned him a number of distinctions and awards, including the ADRIQ Innovation Award, the ADRI University-Industry Partnership Award, the NSERC Synergy Award (2019), and the Leibniz IKZ International Award (2022). 

As scientific director of the Lassonde Institute, Professor Moutanabbir hopes to train and mobilize interdisciplinary teams through large-scale projects with a strong potential impact on Canadian society. He also plans to offer students and postdoctoral fellows a world-class working environment in which to carry out their projects successfully as well as all the tools required for business development.  

“The Institute’s promise is to enable its students to fulfill their dreams,” he explained. “Thanks to their energy and imagination, coupled with our facilities and expertise, we will have a tremendous foundation here not only to enable them to acquire skills and knowledge that go beyond research but also to propel Polytechnique’s innovations into Canadian society.” 

The Institute’s research fields will be limitless. The Lassonde Institute will oversee projects ranging from quantum engineering to artificial intelligence, photonics and nanotechnology. “All future technologies will be explored without disciplinary blinders, even those that do not yet have a name,” says Professor Moutanabbir. 

Learn more 

Lassonde Deeptech Institute website
Professor Oussama Moutanabbir’s profile