MITACS plans to expand scope of its services as Budget doubles funding level

Budget 2012 has embraced the growing importance of industrial internships to industry-academic collaboration with the doubling of a key program administered by MITACS. The Industrial Research and Development Internship (IRDI) program received $14 million over two years which will allow MITACS to boost the number of internships it funds, expand its scope to include a wider range of disciplines and implement new sector and cluster strategies.

MITACS is an internationally recognized national internship program that split off last year from the sunsetting MITACS Network of Centres of Excellence, which was rebranded as Mprime Networks Inc (R$, May 24/11). MITACS has agreements with several provincial organizations to run internships in their jurisdictions but the national program is by far the largest and is about to get bigger.

Negotiations with Treasury Board are ongoing to determine exactly how the new funding is to be spent, but its CEO and scientific director, Dr Arvind Gupta, says he's confident government will endorse its plans to bolster the value and uptake of HQP throughout Canadian industry.

In 2010, MITACS was provided with $29.9 million in IRDI funding, which facilitated the placement of nearly 900 interns in approximately 1,000 internship positions in FY10-11. Those internships engaged 505 companies and 46 universities. AUTO21 also received $5 million to deliver 150 internships a year through CONNECT Canada, a collaborative venture with the Univ of Windsor's Centre for Career Education (R$, May 2/11).

aiming for permanent status

Gupta also hopes that the government will make the increase to IRDI's budget permanent but acknowledges that such a decision will depend upon demonstrating impact over the next two years. He pointed to the budget of the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP), which was doubled with stimulus funding for two years and then received a permanent increase of $100 million in the last Budget (see page 3).

"The government studied IRAP very carefully and then made the increase permanent. We should be able to make the case (for doubling IRDI's budget) that it should be ongoing," says Gupta. "Two years and $14 million is all that's been committed but the indication was that they wanted to double the program."

Increased funding will allow MITACS to pursue several strategic directions that it has already launched pilots for. Its new sector strategy targets not only sectors that conform to national economic priorities but those that typically underspend on R&D relative to their counterparts in other countries.

"These sectors could be a bit or much lower in R&D spending or they could be a strategic advantage for Canada. We're trying new things but it's a work in progress," says Gupta. "The construction sector is one example. It represents 7.7% of Canadian GDP but it spends half the OECD average on R&D. The global view is, if they spend more on R&D it will allow companies to compete with big international players on major projects."

MITACS plans to consult with construction companies and associations on how to best build up R&D activity and capacity.

cluster strategy

IRDI will also fund MITACS' emerging cluster strategy involving larger, multi-disciplinary projects. The intent is to develop an innovation ecosystem by pulling in groups of smaller firms. The strategy is now being implemented as a pilot but could become a key fixture of IRDI if the central agencies approve MITACS' proposals for how to utilize the new funding.

The cluster strategy also ties into MITACS efforts to reach out to the life sciences and social sciences research communities. Companies in these sectors are under-represented in IRDI and Gupta says greater participation will give the program a larger footprint and potential impact.

"Are we sensitive to the fact that many challenges are non-technological? We want to work more with growing companies and social sciences could have an impact on those companies," he says. "There are huge areas of need for the social sciences. Look at the sociology of gaming. It's common now but it wasn't when we first suggested it three years ago."

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