NRCan's Materials Technology Lab opens doors in McMaster Innovation Park

Co-location with key industries, academia

More than a decade after the idea was first hatched, a key laboratory at Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) has officially re-located from Ottawa to Hamilton — a $100-million initiative that has been touted as a new model for matching federal research capacity with its natural client base. The Materials Technology Laboratory (MTL) is now situated in McMaster Univ's Innovation Park, strategically located in the midst of several industries that can benefit from collaboration with both federal scientists and academic researchers.

The cost of the move and construction of a new state-of-the-art facility is estimated at $100 million, including $40 million provided by the federal government in its 2006 Budget. Budget 2007 provided $6 million in annual ongoing funding to cover the lease and operating costs of the new facility.

"MTL is close to all the business interests that will take advantage of the facility in a commercial way but it's also located in a university innovation park," says Geoff Munro, ADM of NRCan's Innovation and Energy Technology Sector branch and the department's chief scientist. "There's tight integration of the three pillars working very closely together."

MTL focuses on new materials R&D in the areas of structural metals and alloys, materials design, pilot-scale processing and performance evaluation. As such, its work is of particular relevance to the energy, transportation and metals-manufacturing sectors, all of which have a major presence in southern Ontario.

To facilitate the move, MTL operations were closed down in Ottawa and more than 30 truckloads of specialized equipment were transferred to Hamilton. That equipment was augmented by purchases of new equipment including a new supercomputer to allow for more sophisticated database management. The purchase of new equipment should be completed within a year while the facility staffs up, with an estimated 18 months to full operation.

state-of-the-art facility

Construction on the new facility commenced in December/09 with a bevy of energy saving features that NRCan hopes will qualify it for the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum level as determined by the Canada Green Building Council. The 13,500-sq-m building will have 157 rooms and feature extensive solar and geothermal systems while maximizing natural light and recycled materials. A new auto research centre is now in the planning stages and will be situated across the street from the MTL facility, providing a direct tie-in with the automotive industry.

In the interim, the lab will focus on installing and testing equipment and staffing up operations to pre-move levels. Of the 114 employees in Ottawa, only 37 made the move to Hamilton, making HR and the search for a new talent a major priority. So far another 31 have been recruited for approximately 60 openings. Union officials are satisfied that the lab's scientific staff remain federal employees but would like assurances that their status won't change in the coming years.

"We want to make use of the community and region we work in and operate on a cluster model. It's very different from Ottawa. The facility is also an excellent source for continuous training. It's a broader, more complex plug-in than Ottawa," says Dr Jennifer Jackman, MTL's DG. "We're establishing a culture for the lab for years to come. It will act as a national centre for materials innovation."

Although the decision to re-locate MTL was made by the previous Liberal administration, the current government has also been supportive; persuaded that Hamilton provides an ideal fit for its technical expertise and specialized research infrastructure. No dramatic change in MTL's research programs are anticipated in the near term, although it will undergo a regular five-year planning exercise in 2012.

"This lab always had a strong orientation towards industry and now there will be even more. There are 10 times more people who need these services within a 100-kilometre radius of the new facility than there was in Ottawa," says Jackman, adding that nearby academic institutions include the Univ of Western Ontario, Univ of Waterloo, Univ of Ontario Institute of Technology and Univ of Toronto.

"It's really more about a stronger, more deeply connected program that can transfer technologies more effectively in areas that are important to the government."

In addition to greater interaction with industry, MTL will also boost its collaboration with area representatives from the Industrial Assistance Research Program technology transfer offices, area technology transfer offices and research institutions. (An organization called C-4 represents 10 area universities and research institutions. It is currently re-structuring with plans for a re-launch in mid 2011).

Jackman says that with renewed investment, MTL is well-positioned to boost collaboration and commercialization activities.

"MTL will be a much-changed laboratory with a renewed staff, new facilities and new equipment updated to the cutting edge," she says.

MTL move aligned with expert panel perspective

While there has been much high-level talk about transferring federal, non-regulatory labs from government to either academia or industry, the MTL move is being described as a co-location with staff remaining employees of the Government of Canada and the facility owned by the innovation park.

In 2007, the government struck a four-member Independent Expert Panel on Federal Laboratories to recommend five early candidates for re-location (R$, September 19/07). In the end, the government moved on two of the five candidates — NRCan's Geosciences Laboratories and the Cereal Research and Innovation Laboratory at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada — but to date no action has been taken. In fact, at least one of the candidates is no longer being actively considered.

"The project's original recommendation (for the NRCan lab) involved selective pieces of GSC (Geological Survey of Canada). We didn't want to fragment GSC but instead integrate it with the academic community," says Munro. "Logistically it didn't make sense. The candidate is off the table in terms of bricks and mortar but academic collaboration will continue."

While the panel's recommendations never materialized, it jettisoned the terms "transfer" and "non-regulatory" as being overly restrictive in terms of meeting the four objectives of the government's transfer strategy: value/efficiency, enhanced quality of scientific activities, expanded opportunities for learning and knowledge transfer and improved economic competitiveness. Instead the panel decided that its mission was best reflected with the term Inter-Sectoral S&T Integration (ISTI), which would see scientists and technicians work under a common research plan and management structure (R$, June 20/08).

Munro says that from this perspective, MTL's move makes perfect sense. "The panel reframed transfer into an acronym of integrating pieces of the system. This exercise is completely consistent with that report," he says.

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