Dr. Marc Nantel is Associate Vice-President, Research & Innovation, at Niagara College, a position he's taken up in July 2011, but he's not new to the Ontario College system.

Previously, Marc was Director of Research, Commercialization and Talent Programs at OCE, a not-for-profit funding agency supporting academia-industry collaborations, where he was also overseeing OCE's nanotechnology and advanced health technologies interests.

After obtaining his Ph.D. in x-ray laser spectroscopy (1994, Université du Québec), Marc spent 4 postdoc years in France and at the University of Michigan, pursuing ever shorter laser-produced visible and x-ray pulses and their applications. Concurrent with his OCE work, he was an Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Toronto from 1998 to 2008, where he continued to pursue his research in laser-matter interactions. He has published more than 90 papers and given more than 200 academic and industrial presentations. He is an active member in several professional associations, including Senior Member of SPIE - The International Society for Photonics Engineering, where he is currently the Chair of SPIE's Education Committee. He was the Chair of the 2007 Education and Training in Optics and Photonics (ETOP) conference, held in Ottawa.

Marc co-founded several organizations, including the Ontario Photonics Technologies Industry Cluster (OPTIC) in 1999, the Ontario Photonics Education and Training Association (OPETA) in 2001, and NanoOntario in 2010. He is a Board Member of Scientist in School, an organization dedicated to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math outreach.