Simon Fraser is one of the largest nearby public universities, and probably the second-ranked computer-science / engineering school in Canada (second to Waterloo). My colleague Alma finished her Ph.D. there a few years ago and has been a great help in building research connections there. Today the CS department had an open house with presentations from many students on their current research projects. At right here is Ghassan from the medial image analysis lab at SFU; at left is Raeef from the electrical and computer engineering department at UBC. It was so fun to get back into that atmosphere of researching and solving problems with like-minded academics; it's been a while since I've been in that scene!