PRECARN to expand scope of pre-competitive research with $20 million Budget announcement

PRECARN Associates Inc enters Phase III of its pre-competitive research program with double the federal funding it received for Phase two, courtesy of a $20-million grant in year-end money in last month's federal Budget. The new money will allow the non-profit, industry-led consortium to increase activity in a wider variety of sectors as it cements links with CANARIE, the Canadian Space Agency, the Climate Change Secretariat and several federal departments and regional agencies.

The federal grant is in addition to funding that PRECARN has lined up with CANARIE ($10 million) and the CSA ($5 million), and current negotiations with several other federal entities are expected to generate an additional $5 million. Announcements are pending. The funding package is expected to stimulate $125 million worth of targeted R&D over the next six years.

"We've received twice as much funding from the government as before because we need scale and speed across several sectors," says Harry Rogers, who is retiring this April after five years as president and CEO (see page 7). "It will allow us to double the scope of what we do over the next five years. We were largely strangers to departments other than Industry Canada."

Rogers says PRECARN is a unique Canadian R&D organization whose work is highly valued by its dozens of industrial partners. Advanced robotics and artificial intelligence systems are working their way in virtually every sector of the economy, and pre-Budget discussions focused on how PRECARN can facilitate the acceleration of technology adoption throughout the economy.

This round of discussions about PRECARN focused on this gap and its importance to other technologies and sectors in the country.

"Industrially driven R&D is Canada's missing link in the innovation system" asserts Rogers. "The new funding allows us to mount a much larger program." Details on the Phase III program will be announced this year for implementation in 2001.

The increased scale and pace of activity is good news to the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS), the Network of Centres of Excellence with which PRECARN is inextricably linked. IRIS conducts similar, earlier-stage research at the university level. PRECARN's increased financial resources will hopefully lead to increased commercialization of its nine lead and 10 support projects, which target the natural resources, healthcare, manufacturing, and information technology sectors. IRIS is currently in its own Phase III of funding under the NCE program and is not eligible for further funding after 2002

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