Grant: CCI Mobilize Grants

New Brunswick Community College’s answer to NSERC’s Mobilize flexible funding call is to invest strategically in two project streams within one established and three emerging priority areas and in two key personnel and 25 student research assistantships. The project funding will support the NBCC Create and Connect streams. Create is our priority, capacity-building stream, and Connect is our rapid-response stream. NBCC will conduct one 12-month, $125,000 Create project and five 6-month, $25,000 Connect projects per year. Create and Connect fall within our proposed TechVilleNB research program. The mission of TechVilleNB is to develop a research ecosystem to promote sustainable and durable economic recovery and social development at regional or municipal levels by cultivating meaningful partnerships to promote digitally enhanced advanced technology readiness. TechVilleNB will be a model regional living technology implementation laboratory to explore and develop smart technologies that can improve the economy and quality of life in a community. TechVilleNB will produce programmed solutions for the region’s rural communities and multiplex cities that are sustainable, connected, inclusive, resilient, and human-centred. NBCC’s Centre for Applied Research in Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing has a ten-year history of delivering cutting-edge digital technology solutions to partners. This priority area was supported by NSERC’s Industrial Research Chair for Colleges program from 2013 to 2023. This existing hub of expertise is the driver of our three emerging priority areas of digital health, precision agriculture, and clean energy technologies that will be mobilized with NSERC support. NBCC designed two new, critical roles through team-wide strategic planning. A Research Facilitator for Faculty Engagement, Indigenous Collaborations, Rural Communities, and the Promotion of EDI will be a business development officer who develops social innovation projects, principally within the Connect stream. A Post-Award Portfolio Manager and Evaluator will measure, demonstrate, and evaluate the impact of TechVilleNB projects, conclusively demonstrating the connective tissue between college-based research activity and industry/community outcomes. NBCC will also offer a more formalized, paid research assistantship training program consisting of 25 full-time summer positions that promote equitable, diverse, and inclusive access to training and meet the HQP needs of our province.