This guest blog post was contributed by TechAlliance member Mitacs.
TechAlliance members in need of the latest research expertise need look no further than Mitacs-Accelerate. This national program connects companies with graduate students and university faculty members through short or long-term research projects aimed at addressing a company’s need.
During a Mitacs-Accelerate internship, highly-skilled graduate students spend approximately half their time onsite with the company, interacting with staff and applying their knowledge and expertise toward the research challenge. The balance of their time is spent at the university, developing innovative approaches to achieving to project objectives.
The program, which covers all academic disciplines, is designed to be modular and highly flexible in both the type and size of projects that it can support. The smallest internship unit is four months, for which a $7,500 investment from the company can be matched dollar-for-dollar to form a research grant of $15,000. This is made possible through the support of Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities and the NCE’s IRDI program. Projects can be scaled accordingly, to match the needs of the research challenge, with improved leveraging available for larger projects through the Accelerate Cluster model.
Many TechAlliance members, including Communitech, Digital Extremes, Lawson Health Research Institute, Trojan Technologies, Renix, and Scisense Inc., are already seeing the benefits of Mitacs programs.
For further information, contact Business Development Director, Jennifer Maclean (jmaclean@mitacs.ca). With offices located on campus at Western University, close to the Research Park, Jennifer works closely with researchers and companies in the greater London area to help develop collaborative research opportunities.
Accelerate is administered by Mitacs, a national, not-for-profit research corporation which connects academia and industry through collaborative research projects. For more information, visit www.mitacs.ca.
