The Ontario government has pledged $8.4 million to extend its support for Mitacs Accelerate, a program that connects graduate students and post-doctoral fellows to paid research opportunities at companies.
John Milloy, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, announced the funding extension Friday at the Communitech Hub in Kitchener, a key provincial node for the commercialization of innovation.
“In today’s knowledge-based economy, it is vital that Ontario continues to support advanced research and develop a highly educated and skilled workforce,” said Milloy, who is also the MPP for Kitchener Centre.
He added that Mitacs not only gives students research opportunities, but helps companies access top research talent, a key and ongoing challenge for startups and small to medium-sized businesses trying to compete globally.
Dr. Arvind Gupta, Mitacs CEO and scientific director, agreed, saying Ontario “needs to ensure that its talented future innovators are given every opportunity to contribute.”
Communitech CEO Iain Klugman credited the Ontario-Mitacs partnership for contributing "not only to our companies’ growth, but to creating a healthy ecosystem, a globally competitive technology cluster, and ultimately, a stronger economy."
Klugman echoed the comments of Milloy and Gupta around talent, saying that "accessing top talent is a difficult and ongoing challenge. But, with the right partners and a strong vision of Waterloo Region as a great place to start and grow a tech company, we are a force to be reckoned with."
Cedric Jeannot, founder and CEO of a two-year-old Waterloo-based startup called I Think Security, lauded Mitacs for enabling companies like his to accelerate research and innovation. Jeannot's products, which secure extremely sensitive documents for government and financial institutions around the world, depend heavily on these things.
"As a company, we need a lot of resources, and resources in a startup come down to two things: people and money," Jeannot said. "Mitacs gives you both."
The program is unique in providing not just money, but talent, he said, dubbing it a sort of "e-dating for business" that helps alleviate the chronic struggle to find qualified people who can help accelerate a company's progress to market.
One of those people, Vivek Krishnan, took the podium to talk about his experience at I Think Security, which was supported by Mitacs.
"Through this internship, I have the ability to apply my research to a broader industrial context and to solve real-world problems," Krishnan said. "The project I'm working on will solve data-security problems for end users."
Mitacs is a national not-for-profit organization that promotes research and innovation by building links between industry and universities. The Mitacs Accelerate program provides for paid internships and splits the cost with participating companies.
Since 2008, Ontario government investments of more than $20 million have helped create 1,650 of these kinds of internships for grad students.
