The New Brunswick of Tomorrow: Steering Research and Innovation at UNB
Encompassing the University of New Brunswick's four grand challenges and spanning multiple disciplines, managing research and innovation partnerships at UNB is both rewarding and instructive.
Key Takeaways
The University of New Brunswick’s Research and Innovation Partnerships group plays a crucial role in municipal, provincial and regional innovation ecosystems, providing support for research projects and taking an active role in shaping them.
The group plays a pivotal role in shaping and driving the university's research strategy, including a goal to reach $100 million in research revenue by 2030. They do this by creating opportunities for researchers and focusing on broad challenges that align with government objectives.
Measurement and storytelling are important components of the research process at UNB. Tracking metrics and telling the stories of the researchers helps to highlight the impact of the research and attract further investment and partnerships.
Understanding University Impact: University of New Brunswick (UNB) is impacting local communities, industries, and government sectors through research and innovation. For those interested in the role of educational institutions in societal development, UNB presents a clear example.
Importance of Collaborations: UNB's emphasis on external partnerships and collaborative research towards major societal challenges showcases the significance of collaborations in higher education and research. It offers a model for other institutions looking to expand their own impact through similar efforts.
Economic Development Initiatives: UNB demonstrates its commitment to fostering economic growth through research and innovation. This might be of particular interest to those in industries related to the initiative's focus areas, as well as policymakers, community leaders, and economic development professionals.
Hart Devitt is the Director, Research & Innovation Partnerships at the University of New Brunswick’s Office of Vice President (Research). Our discussion is edited for the sake of clarity. To that end, if there are errors in fact or communication they lie solely with me.
This is the first of two articles about research and innovation management practices at UNB.
TGB: University of New Brunswick leadership aims to “create the New Brunswick of tomorrow by tackling society’s great challenges head-on and creating positive change.” That’s an admirably broad, ambitious vision. On the research side of the university and your group, Research & Innovation Partnerships specifically, how do you bring this vision to life?
HD: We’re the oldest English-speaking university in Canada and have always been known in the region as leaders in applied research. We’re a comprehensive university so engaging all of our researchers is an important consideration. There are some 4-500 doing what inspires them, with their own sets of incentives driven by their field so if there’s an opportunity to fit their research into a broader umbrella of enquiry for their labs and their students, then we’re helping create a base upon which researchers can build. As part of this outlook, the university is aiming for $100 million in research revenue by 2030. That’s a key step - funding opens doors.
When we help create opportunities for our researchers, there are positive social downstream effects for the province and citizens.
-Hart Devitt
University leadership sees four grand challenges where UNB can support the province and create positive change. These challenges are kept usefully broad so that we can align university expertise with objectives identified by various levels of government. The more broad approach opens important funding opportunities: an initial, practical step is categorizing funding opportunities to encourage broad interest and uptake among faculty.
These four, with examples:
Water research, including subjects like freshwater studies through the Canadian Rivers Institute. The Bay of Fundy is a famous part of the province, so ocean and marine studies are supported. The Marine Additive Manufacturing Centre of Excellence aims to revolutionize Canadian marine manufacturing with 3D metal printing.
Security research includes the Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity, but it is productive to interpret security to include areas like community, food and economic security.
Energy research is conducted in places like the Centre for Nuclear Energy Research, and the Emera & NB Power Research Centre for Smart Grid Technologies.
Health research includes the Health Research Institute and the Centre for Research in Integrated Care. Health is of paramount importance: we have high rates of diabetes, obesity and cancer, and one of the oldest populations in Canada. That’s part of why the province has become something of a health test bed.
Within each of these four areas, massive research categories like artificial intelligence fit very well. All of this, from AI to the grand challenges, links to local communities–what they need and how those needs fit into the challenges the university is oriented around.
Connecting with external groups and companies can also lend some shape and specificity to research projects. We try to match them with researchers and possibly NSERC funding; It’s connecting a challenging problem with our intellect and know-how.
For example, we have a long history of engineering, with one of the oldest engineering schools in Canada. We recently added 17,000 square feet of engineering applied research space, which helps because it makes the commercialization and partnership side simpler. (TGB note: because there is available space and equipment to take on new research projects).
TGB: Do you shift resources and infrastructure to reflect the challenges the university is pursuing, or is reorienting not really a requirement?
HD: It’s a bit of both. There is an element of business as usual: we have ongoing meat and potatoes work that doesn’t stop, like talking to industry and government to understand their immediate research needs. For applied research of this shorter-term variety, the challenges need to be defined very specifically. This form of our work is ongoing and isn’t impacted by larger strategic questions.
There is a lot of travel: connecting with other institutions, connecting with industry to promote what we’re doing. BIO, the health and biology trade show in the U.S. is a good example, where we’ll team up with government officials and other institutions and go as a group. ENLIT in Frankfurt is another example where we’ll attend the European utilities week as part of a trade mission.
But there’s another dimension to this form of outreach: we have international calibre researchers so it’s important we communicate that message far and wide by being present as much as possible.
TGB: The outreach work, what are the outcomes you are pursuing?
HD: It’s necessarily a couple of pieces. Using aerospace and defence as an example, it’s an industry with a very long sales cycle. Thales, Boeing or Lockheed Martin: they’re not going to move at a trade show. They want productive long-term relationships based on trust, new ideas and technologies. A consistent presence builds trust and faith, and exposes them to our pipeline of new ideas so when the larger opportunities happen they think of UNB and can envision a productive partnership.
A specific example is the relationship developed fifteen years ago between UNB and Lockheed Martin. When a company like Lockheed wants to sell to the Canadian government in a strategically important industry like aerospace, under the Industrial Technological Benefits Policy they are obligated to invest in Canada as part of the contract. But the obligation to invest in Canada comes with major multiplier effects–sometimes five or even nine times the dollars put in–and opens innovation and manufacturing opportunities across a range of small businesses and academic institutions.
The Lockheed investment in UNB has produced excellent results. The university founded the Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity, taking our pre-existing expertise in cybersecurity and building infrastructure around it. We’ve levelled up with worldwide recognition and the resources to support that reputation.
We also formed the Marine Additive Manufacturing Centre of Excellence, which is itself built atop pre-existing expertise: 3D metal printing in this case.
The question of which Canadian companies and institutions large-scale partners will work with addresses the reasoning behind our ongoing investment in conferences, trade delegations and overall relationship building: we show up year after year for precisely this sort of opportunity. Large scale partnerships are an accelerant: new centres attract researchers, students and industry dollars. UNB’s reputation increases, making the next opportunity that much easier to reach.
TGB: Forming partnerships at this scale clearly isn’t easy. What are the key ingredients to being successful?
HD: It’s hard to template, and hard to quantify the methods and the reasons it works, but persistence and demonstration of excellence are key elements.
Furthermore, the government carefully scrutinizes applications featuring at-scale partners and Canadian institutions. At issue are the good faith intentions of both parties; a very recent relationship might not be all it’s cracked up to be.
TGB: Let’s talk a bit more about the benefits of large scale partnerships and the resulting resources. For example, are you able to recruit researchers based on the Lockheed Martin investment?
HD: The research and academic world operates by a different set of incentives. Engaged colleagues, well-funded labs (Lockheed Martin invested $8 million) and infrastructure together with New Brunswick’s lifestyle are attractive to the researchers UNB want to persuade moving to a smaller, lesser known area. This said, recruiting researchers falls to the individual departments.
TGB: You cover a wide range of activities. How do you know they’re working?
HD: Answering that question is made easier through our collaboration with Springboard Atlantic. They help manage intellectual property for 19 member institutions, and conduct industry outreach. (TGB note: Springboard is a “network designed to grow Atlantic Canada’s innovation economy through collaboration among post-secondary institutions and industry.”)
This helps us with measurement, how we as a group capture metrics. We track licenses, number of funded projects (federal, provincial, ACOA), contracts (fee for service where we’re helping solve industry challenges) and other outcomes. Contracts average about 600 a year at UNB. Springboard tracks the overall regional contribution.
We’re also tracking the assignment of IP rights and licenses, which includes spin-off companies that have institutionally created IP.
How do you support startups?
HD: Startups have lots of options within UNB; we have incubators and accelerators on campus as well as strong local affiliations. Our office can get involved as well as Springboard. As a university, our role is to create the optimal conditions but we don’t really get involved institutionally other than financial mechanisms like delaying license fees on institutionally owned IP or taking a passive equity stake.
UNB and affiliated accelerators/incubators:
J Herbert Smith Centre for Technology Management & Entrepreneurship
The Summer Institute: An intensive, in-person 3-month accelerator program for early-stage entrepreneurs.
The Wallace McCain Institute is for business leadership featuring experiential, peer-based programs giving growth-stage leaders what they need to succeed.
Energia Ventures is a three-month intensive accelerator for entrepreneurs with an innovative business in the energy, smart grid, artificial intelligence, cleantech, and cybersecurity sectors.
Scale Up helps companies increase revenue and offers an environment that makes growth a core priority
Fraser Student Venture Fund provides students the opportunity to research and analyze businesses that are in the start-up stage of development and award cash investments to those they consider investment ready.
CS Square is a collaborative, knowledge-sharing space for computer science students
TGB: You can really see the process here—the research inputs and the innovation output.
HD: We really want to increase the rate of startups out of UNB; in 2014 we were called the most entrepreneurial university in Canada and we’ve made progress since then. There has to be that external environment. We need the local ecosystem. Fredericton has this in tech startups, with NBTel one of the originators. IBM is here, same with Siemens. The environment encourages entrepreneurs to try, like the younger researchers who often do the startups, and acquirers are right here.
The context is we’re a comprehensive university with researchers engaging in what inspires them, so it’s important to note our role within the ecosystem fulfills the earlier parts of the process. Some of this work–workshops, seminars, lunch and learns, hosting workshops, presentations–is hard to measure. Does a workshop lead to a startup? Does an external expertise request lead to a startup? It’s hard to draw a straight line here but overall these sorts of activities increase the probability of it happening.
Another part of the process is storytelling. Hiring our own marketing and communications person increases our department’s role as wayfinders, lending focus to researchers’ stories. These stories awaken ministers, government, business and people on the street to their work, and its potential. [TGB note: A high rate of internal research activity and information sharing, together with external awareness, contribute to those chance collisions of high know-how specialists solving complex problems, and accessing external support in the form of market access, capital etc.]
This is where the value of research is well understood: the year over year steady stream of high quality, rigorous applied research drives enrolment of high quality students, including attracting the grad students who fuel new research. Thriving, intellectual research supports investments like the new engineering space; these strategic investments attract partners and help propel us toward the $100 million in research revenue mark. The research process as a whole is part of what enables UNB to be such a strong contributor to the province.
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