The Short Report - July 7, 2021: Ottawa invests $38 million in applied R&D at colleges, Carleton U joins as founding partner of Hub350, and more

COVID-19 & HEALTH NEWS

New projects are being funded by the Government of Canada's Immunization Partnership Fund, which received $64 million in 2020 to support vaccination coverage in Canada. The Indigenous Primary Health Care Council (North York) and the Women's College Hospital (Toronto) will each receive up to $500,000 to promote vaccine uptake among clients while the University Health Network (Toronto) will receive up to $325,000. – GoC

The Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital's Clinical Research Unit (The Neuro) has partnered with the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel on a clinical trial in the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The trial builds on pre-clinical research conducted at the Weizmann Institute and is supported by funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Fonds de recherche du Québec and the Israel Ministry of Health as well as Brain Canada, ALS Canada and Muscular Dystrophy Canada. – McGill University

COLLABORATION, INNOVATION & FUNDING

The Government of Canada is investing more than $38 million in R&D projects at colleges, local businesses and community organizations across Canada to address local challenges. The investment will provide 53 awards to colleges, cégeps and polytechnics through the 2020 College and Community Innovation Program competition and the 2021 College and Community Social Innovation fund competition managed by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada in collaboration with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council as well as the Canada Foundation for Innovation's College-Industry Innovation Fund. – NSERC

Researchers from the University of Guelph, McGill University and the University of Manitoba are developing a program that will equip trainees to tackle urban environmental challenges. The Implementing Smart Cities Interventions to Build Healthy Cities (SMART) Training Platforms is part of the Canadian Institute for Health Research's (CIHR) Healthy Cities Research Initiative, a 10-year, $43-million-plus research and training program. CIHR, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council are each contributing one-third of the funding for the platform. – GoC 

Next Generation Manufacturing Canada has announced almost $4.2 million in collaborative funding through its Innovative Superclusters Initiative for a multi-partner project led by robotic mushroom harvesting company Mycionics (Putnam, ON). The project will deploy advanced robotic solutions to create the world's first end-to-end robotic harvesting platform. – GlobeNewswire

The University of Manitoba (Digital Agriculture) has been awarded nearly $2.5 million to advance research and training capacity for students in collaboration with industry partners while University of Manitoba's Lab2Market will receive more than $1.2 million to enhance research commercialization performance through Western Economic Diversification Canada's Regional Innovation Ecosystems Program. – GoC 

Centennial College (Toronto) is establishing a Centre for Explainable Data Analytics to develop intelligent systems for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Greater Toronto Area, thanks to $2,000,000 in funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council's College and Community Innovation Program and the Build Innovation Enhancement Grant. – Centennial College

IT automotive retail software specialist Quorum Information Technologies (Calgary) is receiving funding of up to approximately $725,000 from the National Research Council of Canada's Industrial Research Assistance Program to support a machine learning R&D project that will centralize and consolidate dealership data and add machine learning capabilities to its Cloud-based applications. – Quorum

Ryerson University's tech startup incubator The DMZ is partnering with Universities of Canada in Egypt to attract and support technology startups in Cairo following the launch of a satellite campus in February. – The DMZ

The Government of Canada is contributing $5 million through the Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions' Regional Economic Growth through Innovation program to build capacity and accelerate commercialization in the MiQro Innovation Collaborative Centre (C2MI; Bromont, QC), Canada's largest microelectronics R&D and commercialization centre. – GoC 

Carleton University has signed on as a founding academic partner of Hub350, the Kanata North Business Association's new global technology centre. Carleton is building an innovation space within the hub that will foster research and collaboration with Kanata North companies and other post-secondary institutions. It is due to open this fall. – Carleton U.

REPORTS

IT service management company FX Innovation (Montreal) has released a white paper calling for an increase in the adoption of cloud computing to accelerate digitization in the Canadian economy. – FX Investment

FINANCE, VC & INVESTMENT

The Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund (OCIF), Alberta Innovates and the Government of Alberta are supporting the launch of the Canadian subsidiary of agrifood investor SVG Ventures - Thrive, which will be based in Calgary with up to $2.5 million in funding. OCIF and Alberta Innovates are providing up to $1 million each while Alberta Agriculture and Forestry will provide $500,000 in grants to Olds College through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership. – Calgary Economic Development

THE GRAPEVINE

Dr. Rick Audas is the new acting director for Memorial University's Research Data Centre (RDC). Audas is professor of health statistics and economics in the Division of Community Health and Humanities. He has been appointed for the period of July 1 to March 31, 2022, and replaces Dr. Zhiwei Gao, whose term has finished. – Memorial U.

Dr. Kathy McCoy has been awarded the Killam Memorial Chair at the University of Calgary for her work as an internationally recognized leader in microbiome and immunology research. McCoy is the founding director of UCalgary’s International Microbiome Centre and is a member of the Snyder Institute for Chronic Diseases. – UCalgary

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