Federal $29M fund embeds PhDs and post-docs into tech firms

“Among G7 countries, Canada places last in terms of developing technology fast and getting it to market, and “very low in the OECD in terms of stimulating industrial R&D,” according to Arvind Gupta, CEO of Talent Innovation Canada (TICAN). But that could soon change. TICAN, a not-for-profit organization that connects university graduate and post-doctoral students with companies, recently received $29.2 million over three years, as the federal government fulfilled a commitment made in its fall 2024 economic statement . Dr. Gupta, a computer science professor at the University of Toronto (U of T) and a former president of the University of British Columbia, told University Affairs that he expects that the federal investment will support about 300 projects at universities across Canada. The bulk of the projects are just getting underway, after funding began rolling out in the 2025-26 fiscal year. “We know that we have to accelerate advanced technology development and do a better job at exporting advanced technology to the world,” he said. “Frankly, we’re not good at taking discoveries and translating them into commercialization projects, and that’s the impetus for this initiative.” One year into the three-year commitment, TICAN has begun to embed graduate students and post-doctoral fellows at firms to create new technologies and provide the students with hands-on research as part of their theses. “By embedding students inside a company, you’re staying aligned with what the company needs, and because the students are on site, the company knows exactly what they’re working on, and the commercialization cycle gets shortened,” he said. “It’s a very European model.” Collaboration follows European model For instance, in Germany, there are dozens of Fraunhofer institutes that partner grad students with companies that develop technology. In France, engineering schools are closely aligned with industry and involve applied research collaborations in which graduate students receive internships at companies as part of their degree programs. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, grad students can pursue industrial PhDs, which involve splitting their time between a university and an industry partner where they conduct applied research. Although the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is part of the United States Department of Defense, partners with universities to develop technology, “North America, for the most part, has shied away from this type of thinking of integrating a graduate student’s degree with an industrial challenge,” said Dr. Gupta, who holds a PhD in computer science from U of T. He explained that through TICAN projects, companies will provide graduate students and post-doctoral fellows with a research environment to pursue a project “that directly relates to the company’s technology need.” “The company has a vested interest in hiring that student after they graduate and they become an integral part of the commercialization process,” said Dr. Gupta, who served as CEO and scientific director of Mitacs Canada, a national non-profit organization that works with government and industry to fund student researchers. Projects include sustainability, life sciences, high-tech TICAN projects will fall under four sectoral areas: mobility, which involves transportation, from cars to trains and airplanes; clean growth, to make industry more sustainable and environmentally friendly; biosciences; and microelectronics and information and communications technology. Robert Avram is leading a project under the biosciences banner at HeartWise AI that is based at the Montreal Heart Institute. His project , which involves a master’s engineering student from U of T, will use artificial intelligence to interpret electrocardiograms (ECGs) from images — without the need to access raw digital signals from the procedure — that will unlock access to millions of ECGs, which are currently non-interpretable. They will then extract digital biomarkers from the images to help determine the state of a person’s heart. “We’re trying to build a model that can look at a photo of an ECG and diagnose and predict disease or a heart attack,” explained Dr. Avram, a professor of cardiology at Université de Montréal. He said that it will take about two to three years before the HeartWise-ECG project is ready for clinical application after undergoing a Health Canada assessment. The post Federal $29M fund embeds PhDs and post-docs into tech firms appeared first on University Affairs .

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