MITACS-led consortium wins bid to run new industrial R&D internship program

A national consortium led by the MITACS Network of Centres of Excellence (NCE) has won the competition to manage the NCE's Industrial Research and Development Internship (IRDI) pilot program with $8.64 million in funding. The pilot will see 1,200 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows placed over two years and will be expanded and made permanent if deemed successful.

Several organizations including Precarn Inc applied to manage IRDI – now called ACCELERATE Canada – but MITACS enjoyed a strong advantage since the program was modeled on its highly successful internship program. The new funding pushes MITACS' FY08-09 revenue to more than $20 million — by far the largest NCE in terms of overall funding.

The consortium has 15 members — MITACS, 13 other NCEs and the National Program for Complex Data Structures, a national institute of statisticians headquartered at the Univ of Toronto and primarily supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. MITACS' current internship program will be rolled into ACCELERATE Canada which will become an operating division of MITACS Inc.

"We designed, launched and ran our internship program and we have put in lots of time and energy. It makes sense to go with people with the drive and the track record," says Dr Arvind Gupta, CEO and scientific director of the Mathematics of Information Technology and Advanced Systems (MITACS) NCE. "There were other good applicants and we'll be talking to them with the view of bringing them into the consortium to capitalize on their ideas and energy."

Federal support for ACCELERATE Canada was announced in the 2007 Budget and covers only a portion of the necessary funding. At $20,000 per internship, $24 million is required but Gupta is confident the remaining funds can be secured through the provinces. MITACS has already landed major contracts with Ontario and British Columbia and smaller contracts with Manitoba and Newfoundland. Negotiations are ongoing with most other provinces.

The funding will allow MITACS to expand both the size and number of offices it maintains across Canada, which currently stands at six. A staff of 35 will be expanded to 60 by the end of the year. The number of business development offices, project managers, scientific coordinators and internships coordinators required to deliver the program reflects the hands-on nature of identifying and then matching research professors with companies, which means that overhead costs appear substantial.

"It takes a lot of infrastructure to run projects. It's very labour intensive and we don't apologize for it," says Gupta. "We have to engage smaller companies within the industrial base if we want to be more innovative. We need to change the mindset and create channels for ideas to flow."

Getting the word out to small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) requires a presence at trade shows for targeted sectors and close cooperation with industry associations. Once companies appreciate the benefit that internships can bring to their business, Gupta says they typically have no problems finding the $7,500 required to participate. That represents the $20,000 cost of the internship plus $2,500 for supplementary training such as project management, team work and communications skills.

"I see this program as national infrastructure. It's all about creating grassroots demand. Too much of what we do at universities is pushing on a string to get things out. We need to create demand for internships," he says. "Ideally we would like the funding to be one third federal, one third provincial and one third industry. Most of the provincial funding is now in place or pending."

If the pilot phase of ACCELERATE Canada is successful, Gupta says serious consideration should be given to utilizing the model for other joint NCE initiatives. As an example, he says clean energy R&D could benefit from such an approach as many NCEs run relevant projects.

"Right now, each NCE has a project in the clean energy field. If a consortium was formed, it would be better coordinated to make more rapid progress," he says. "This is especially important as we move into the international arena. MITACS already works with the UK, Mexico and the Germans and they have much larger programs. It would allow us to act as equal partners."

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