NRC-NSERC-BDC collaboration yields five nanotechnology research projects

Model may be applied to other technologies

Five nanotechnology research projects will receive approximately $3 million each after being selected as part of a new collaboration between three government-funded agencies. Jointly funded by the National Research Council (NRC) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the five collaborative projects were awarded a total of $15 million over three years and were selected after being assessed for their commercial potential by the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC).

Seven NRC institutes, 13 academic institutions and 16 companies are participating in the five projects which were selected from 50 letters of intent and 15 full applications. The projects are expected to yield commercially promising advances in knowledge in areas such as solar cell semiconductors, nano-composite materials for photovoltaic cells, photon sources for quantum information processing, laser-based instrumentation for nano-aerosol characterization and polyester nanocomposites for transportation, construction and packaging applications.

"It's a very nice way for us to lever, and for NSERC, they can leverage their own $7.5 million into projects that are more targeted. Targeting is the name of the game although that doesn't mean everything has to be targeted," says NRC president Dr Pierre Coulombe. "We're putting in our own money to pay our scientists and equipment and NSERC is offering grants to those university professors who are part of these teams."

The NRC-NSERC-BDC initiative was announced in last year's federal S&T Strategy (R$, May 31/07) and is intended to bring three organizations that target distinct areas in the innovation chain, from basic/targeted research (NSERC), applied research (NRC) and seed and early-stage funding. If the collaboration is successful, other organizations within the Industry Canada portfolio may replicate the model.

The projects' business partners will participate in the projects and provide in-kind and some financial support, in return for access to cutting-edge technologies in the early stages of development.

Cyrium Technologies Inc, for example is participating in the Sunrise project to develop a new class of solar cells with 10% greater efficiency. Located in the NRC's Industrial Partnership Facility, the start-up has partnered with Opel Inc, a Shelton CT-based developer and manufacturer of solar products.

"Our staff will participate directly in the research (and) if something new and exciting is found in two or three years from now, we are capable of making the the cells," says Cyrium founder and CTO, Dr Simon Fafard.

The collaborative model is intended to bring together resident expertise regardless of its geographical location or sectoral affiliation. If the nano projects yield results, the three organizations may considered other areas of focus.

"We would like to expand this further and bio-products could be an area. It could also be fuel cells or advanced materials," says Coulombe. "These are all areas where NRC is adding significant presence to the SME (small company) landscape. That's the whole scheme behind this — to be more efficient."

"It's a bit of a symbiosis where you have the universities with highly qualified people and talent and you have people at NRC who are quite used to working on targeted research and want to do a flow-through to look at the implementation of proof of concept. Then you have the industrial partner," says Dr Richard Normandin, NRC's VP physical sciences. "Bring all of this together and marry the three parts of the logistics to go from an idea to an actual product. That requires being able to talk to one another and understand each other's view, realizing the magnitude of the effort that each partner has to put in."

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