AUTO21 joins MITACS to deliver Industrial Research and Development Internship program

The Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) program has selected MITACS and AUTO21 to deliver $34.4 million over the next five years for its Industrial Research and Development Internship (IRDI) program. MITACS will deliver the bulk of the IRDI funding ($29.4 million) to support 850 internships annually via its MITACS Accelerate subsidiary, while AUTO21 received $5 million to deliver 150 a year through CONNECT Canada, a collaborative venture with the Univ of Windsor's Centre for Career Education.

The decision to extend IRDI funding beyond MITACS — which managed the program during its pilot phase on behalf of a consortium of organizations — to include more than one service provider is seen as a critical evolution as the program becomes a primary delivery mechanism for funding devoted to commercialization and graduate student training.

"We believe this program still has to grow more and multiple agents will become more important. We're already forging other alliances to get us into new communities," says MITACS scientific director and CEO Dr Arvind Gupta, who says he has a "secret goal" of 10,000 internships annually. "We're still lining up funding partners and seeing lots of growth in sectors outside of IT (information technology) in both R&D intensive and traditional sectors, even in the social sciences."

MITACS and AUTO21 are employing different models to deliver IRDI funding. MITACS takes an individualized approach and matches companies with professors who then finds the best-suited graduates whereas AUTO21 lists companies on a website and allows students to make their selections. In addition, MITACS internship grants are slightly larger and include a $5,000 research grant funded through the financial contributions of various provinces. AUTO has no plans to solicit provincial funding.

Gupta says the differing delivery models will allow IRDI to experiment with varying practices and that each organization will share information, sending internships to each other if it's determined that a specific model is preferable. And while each organization has specific sectoral strengths, there has been no division in which sectors they are responsible for.

As the new entrant to the program, AUTO21 has teamed with the Univ of Windsor to take advantage of its secure, on-line system for matching students with companies. The NCE's strength in the automotive and advanced materials sectors is seen as an augmentation to the IRDI program which will help extend the internship model throughout the economy.

AUTO21 scientific director and CEO Dr Peter Frise describes the CONNECT Canada model as "light and agile" which will help penetrate industries in which is has existing strengths.

"Canada doesn't derive as much benefit from public investments as other countries do. Basic connections between industry and academe are not as strong as they need to be," says Frise. "Internships are a recognition of the fact that commercialization comes from companies with needs and are designed to satisfy those needs and help solve problems. That's how the economy functions. It's a knowledge pull model from knowledge receptors."

The IRDI funding goes beyond the NCE funding horizon of both MITACS and AUTO21, which were launched in 1999 and 2001 respectively, providing an indication of how they will evolve once their traditional NCE funding expires.

For Gupta, the internship model offers Canada's best opportunity to develop a knowledge-based economy and society at relatively little cost. "The bridge building we are doing between companies and academia is unprecedented," he says. "In the near future I will be talking to the granting councils and Industry Canada about the program's potential. It breaks the model for current programs except for IRAP (Industrial Research Assistance Program) but we do it on the research end."

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