New cohort of Mitacs fellows to start 12-month immersion in government agencies

Twenty-one academic researchers from Canada and the US are the recipients of the 2017-2018 Canadian Science Policy Fellowship awards. Mitacs has announced the second cohort of fellows who will train for 12 months to learn how government policies at the federal and provincial levels are crafted. Mitacs is working with partners in the Government of Canada, the Univ of Ottawa’s Institute for Science, Society and Policy, Univ of Victoria, and the Canadian Science Policy Fellowship Advisory Council to support the placements with host agencies in federal or provincial governments in Ottawa and Victoria BC. The fellows — all of them with PhDs or faculty members of Mitacs partner universities — are working on specific projects with partner government agencies and sharing their expertise with these agencies. The training and networking events will cover topics such as science policy, science communication, leadership, media training and public engagement. The fellowships are aimed at building relationships between government decision makers and the researchers – governments share their policy making process while the researchers share their analytical expertise to enlighten the process. The list of fellows can be found here.