ACCELERATE Ontario is a unique program which connects the province’s up-and-coming highly-skilled researchers – grad students and post-doctoral fellows – with Ontario companies through short-term applied research projects.
The formula is simple; a 4-month research project is identified which is of interest to an Ontario company, a graduate student or post-doctoral fellow – the intern – and his/her supervising professor. Over the 4 months, the intern undertakes research on the identified business issue under the supervision of the professor, all the while remaining a student at his/her university
Half of the intern’s time is spent on site with the partner company, researching the identified issue, collecting data and gaining an in-depth understanding of the challenge while the balance of his/her time is spent at the university, further advancing the research under the guidance of a professor and developing an innovative tool, technology or solution to the company’s challenge.
For each four month internship, the partner company contributes $7.5K, which is matched dollar-for-dollar by ACCELERATE Ontario, through the support of the Government of Ontario, the NCE Program and NSERC. The result is a $15K research grant to the intern’s supervising professor with the intern receiving a minimum of $10K for the 4-month period. The remaining $5K can support other costs associated with the internship, such as intern travel, computer equipment, laboratory materials etc. The program is managed by MITACS, a federally-funded research network connecting Canadian researchers with companies, government agencies and other organizations through collaborative research projects.
To facilitate research opportunities, MITACS has an Ontario-based team of business development personnel hosted by York University. With diverse backgrounds in information technology, business, biotechnology and chemistry, the team will work companies to clearly define their research challenges and find the ideal research expertise to tackle the problem. They will also help university-based researchers identify companies which could be interested in their research.
Any faculty is eligible for an ACCELERATE Ontario internship – from nursing to computer science and engineering, to biology to anthropology to social work. For more information, visit www.acceleratecanada.ca and click on “Ontario” or contact Namrata Barai at nbarai@mitacs.ca .