AFCEA December Hybrid LUNCHEON: Marie-Pierre Raymond, MEng, CD (LCol Ret’d)

AFCEA December Hybrid Luncheon : Marie-Pierre Raymond, MEng, CD (LCol Ret’d)

Title presentation: From Trench to Tech: How Ukraine’s Innovation Flywheel Inspires Canada’s C&E Future

This presentation offers a unique opportunity to explore the intersection of emerging technologies, battlefield innovation, and the urgent pace of capability development in conflict zones. Drawing from her deployment to Ukraine, Marie-Pierre shares firsthand insights into innovation at the speed of war—particularly in the domains of small and FPV drones, electronic warfare, and demining.

Working closely with Ukrainian defense and security organizations, Marie-Pierre collaborated with military personnel, Canadian innovators, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), and the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) to help integrate cutting-edge technologies into operational use. Her field experience includes working with frontline personnel and members of the Ukraine Armed Forces Innovation Ecosystem and coordinating Ukrainian participation in Canada’s IDEaS Counter-Uncrewed Aerial Systems Sandbox and Demining Technologies demonstrations.

These experiences have yielded critical lessons on how science and technology are reshaping modern battlefields. The session will distill these lessons into actionable insights for the CAF and Canadian innovation partners, ensuring they inform future defense and security efforts.

Marie-Pierre holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the Université de Montréal and a master’s in chemical engineering from RMC. She joined the CAF in 1992 as a Communications and Electronics Engineer specializing in Electronic Warfare and Signal Intelligence. After retiring from the military, she returned to her scientific roots as a Defence Scientist at DRDC, where she now serves as Innovation Portfolio Manager for the IDEaS Program, working closely with military and security stakeholders.

In 2024, she deployed to Ukraine as the Operation UNIFIER Scientific Advisor, collaborating with the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the National Guard, and volunteer organizations to support the war effort through science and technology.

Ukraine’s battlefield has become the world’s fastest innovation lab, a live ecosystem where frontline problems are prototyped, tested, and refined within days. This talk explores how Ukraine’s “innovation flywheel” operates, the structural and cultural enablers that drive it, and how this wartime ingenuity is accelerating technological evolution.

Through a practical Communications and Electronics (C&E) lens, the session examines what Canada can adopt from modular architectures and software-first systems to embedded experimentation and rapid integration cells. It concludes with concrete next-quarter actions for industry and government to build a defense innovation network capable of operating at Ukraine’s speed—where iteration equals survival, and adaptation equals advantage.

Sponsor: IBM

Venue: NCR Officers' Mess, 149 Somerset Street West, Ottawa

Don't miss this opportunity to network, learn, and enjoy a delicious meal with industry professionals. Reserve your spot today!

Dress Code: Business Casual, no jeans please.

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