Grant: CCI Mobilize Grants

Once known as the centre of the Canadian manufacturing industry, Hamilton, Ontario has now grown to be one of the most diversified economies in the country, ranking as one of the top 10 cities for tech talent, one of the top healthcare clusters in Canada and home to a vibrant Information and Communications Technology and digital media sector. Mohawk College has a proud history of supporting the needs of partners across the region and local companies, healthcare organizations and not-for-profits employees are part of Mohawk’s 23,000 active employer partners. In the last 12 years, IDEAWORKS, Mohawk College’s Applied Research and Innovation division has worked with partners in the Hamilton region and beyond to support their organizational goals and their clients. IDEAWORKS’s applied research priorities in 8 strategic areas – advanced manufacturing, energy and power, digital health, health technology, digital accessibility, Internet of Things, unmanned sensor systems, and sustainability have been developed and grown in response to community innovation needs. With the support of the NSERC Mobilize program, Mohawk College will grow and enhance its applied research collaborations with community partners with a focus on advanced digitization that helps partners become more efficient and more accurate in process and product development, accelerating the development of new products, improving product and process quality and creating high-quality technology job opportunities in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors. IDEAWORKS will also create high-quality paid employment opportunities for up to 300 students, preparing them for in-demand quality careers in Hamilton and across Canada. The funding will be used to enhance the existing research programs with the addition of three new technical positions in analytics, systems integration and application development. Three additional roles will also be added to IDEAWORKS to support current and future partner demand; these three roles are all linked to IDEAWORKS’s key partner value proposition of ‘taking the lead on your research projects’ where the college provides expert project management, a hands-on approach to maximizing the partner’s investment and navigating the grants and funding process. Finally, the funding will also be used to create small grant opportunities to support short, time-critical applied research projects.