E-Bulletin
IN Partnership
Issue 1 - January 2010
- Welcome to the inaugural edition of IN Partnership targeted at Canadian business
- Four stories of remarkable company growth, productivity gains, market opportunities and cost savings via industry-academic partnerships
- New Engage Grants Program helps companies and academic researchers connect on short-term R&D projects
- NSERC’s new business-friendly Policy on Intellectual Property
- Trade secret—How companies add highly-qualified workers to their R&D team at minimal cost
Four stories of remarkable company growth, productivity gains, market opportunities and cost savings via industry-academic partnerships
1. Small Toronto-based firm becomes world leader in nanometals
Integran Technologies has leveraged its relationship with the University of Toronto into a market leading position in advanced nanometals.
With its ability to control and manipulate matter on an unthinkable scale, nanotechnology is enabling scientists to fundamentally redefine the way materials behave. By seizing this incredible capability, Toronto-based Integran Technologies Ltd., in partnership with the University of Toronto, is pioneering and commercializing a whole new class of nanometals and associated materials that are considerably lighter, tougher, stronger and longer lasting than their conventional counterparts.
Built on a bedrock of NSERC-funded people, discoveries and innovations, Integran has emerged as a world leader in advanced metallurgical nanotechnologies. Its nanometals are finding a host of high-performance applications ranging from the golf clubs used to win the prestigious Masters tournament to novel protective coatings for advanced carbon-fibre composite aircraft components.
Founded in 1999, Integran has experienced remarkable growth in recent years. Since 2007, the company’s Canadian-based staff has more than doubled to 55, fuelled by a four-fold increase in revenues during 2008 alone.
More than half of Integran’s 40-person R&D team received advanced training through NSERC industrial scholarships and fellowships, as well as NSERC-sponsored research partnerships between the company and the University of Toronto. "NSERC has been with us every step of the way and has played a key role in nurturing the fundamental science, skilled talent and real-world innovations that give Integran its edge," explains Integran CEO Dr. Gino Palumbo.
2. Computer simulation helps boost productivity and mitigate risk in the construction industry
Canada’s construction industry is realizing tens of millions of dollars in productivity gains from the application of computer simulation tools developed by an NSERC Industrial Research Chair at the University of Alberta, supported by 30 companies.
Dr. Simaan AbouRizk is somewhat of a virtual wonder to Canada's construction industry. For more than a decade, the University of Alberta construction engineering professor and his research team have applied expertise in computer simulation to help an ever-expanding cluster of industry partners enhance their operating methods and bottom lines.
"We are bringing the construction industry into a virtual world that can significantly improve its ability to operate in the real world," explains Dr. AbouRizk, who holds the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Construction Engineering and Management.
This simulated world—using computers to build, study and manipulate virtual models of real systems—allows construction companies to identify and mitigate risks before real-world operations begin.
AbouRizk says the Chair was created partly to address the industry's comparatively poor productivity performance. The Chair's researchers have designed a set of virtual construction tools for a wide array of productivity-boosting tasks, such as process optimization, decision support and risk analysis. And the payoff has been huge. Today, these powerful, predictive tools are helping industry realize productivity gains worth tens of millions of dollars annually.
PCL Industrial Management Inc., Canada’s largest construction group, has applied these technologies to create realistic 3D visualizations of how heavy-lift construction projects will unfold, long before a shovel hits the ground. "These visualizations are a powerful selling tool because you can show the customer persuasive representations of what the construction plan will look like," says Rick Hermann, a senior engineer with PCL.
PCL has hired more than a third of the 60-odd master's and doctoral students who have graduated from the Chair program. "Now that companies have seen what these students can do, we can't train enough of them," says AbouRizk.
One measure of the industry's growing appetite for tools and students is the phenomenal growth of the Chair itself. When it was launched in 1997, the Chair had six industry sponsors, two faculty and six postgraduate students. Today, it is backed by about 30 organizations supporting five faculty and 50 students.
3. A new class of nanomaterials becoming a transformative technology for multiple industries
A revolutionary nanomaterial, in which Canada maintains world leadership, holds big promise for the forestry sector and a host of other industries, ranging from aerospace and automotive to plastics and pharmaceuticals.
The smallest structural building block of trees is promising the biggest array of business opportunities for Canada's forest products industry.
Crystallites of cellulose—the most abundant organic substance on the planet—are a relatively new class of nanomaterials that are rapidly advancing towards the marketplace with unrivalled breadth. These revolutionary biopolymers, known in the singular as nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC), are winding their way toward at least nine industries, ranging from aerospace and automotive to medical devices and pharmaceuticals.
This novel nanomaterial is at the heart of a new Business-Led Network of Centres of Excellence called Aboranano, which is focusing on applications development.
NCC possesses extraordinary potential due to its strength, optical properties, conductivity, reactivity, self-assembling, anti-microbial, self-cleaning and bio-compatibility characteristics—all of which are controllable. It can significantly improve the performance of a wide assortment of products from exterior paints that last five times longer to plastics that are hundreds of times stronger.
NCC has fascinated university researchers since its self-assembling properties in aqueous suspension were first demonstrated in 1961 by a Université de Montréal chemistry professor, Dr. Robert Marchesseault. It would take almost four more decades, however, before NSERC-funded scientists at McGill University fully understood NCC's remarkable attributes.
With the advent of ever more powerful imaging tools, such as transmission electron microscopes and atomic force microscopy, the science gathered considerable momentum. These tools enabled unprecedented insights into NCC's properties and behaviour at the nano scale.
NCC made a quantum leap toward commercialization in 2006. That's when production of pilot-scale quantities (kilograms per week) began at the Montreal-based Paprican division of FPInnovations, the world's largest forest industry research institute. Dr. Richard Berry, coordinator of the nanotechnology effort at FPInnovations, is guiding that initiative.
An industrial-scale demonstration plant, with production capacity of tonnes per week, is presently under serious consideration by FPInnovations, industry and government.
"NCC has progressed from a scientific curiosity in university labs into a transformative technology for the forest products industry," remarks Dr. Ron Crotogino, Paprican's Manager, University Partnerships. "It has emerged as a key building block for a new Canadian bio-economy based on innovative, highly-engineered, carbon-neutral products from a highly renewable resource."
Propelling the industry's enthusiasm is Canada's unequivocal world leadership in NCC technology. This coveted stature, says Dr. Crotogino, is in large measure due to the fundamental discoveries of university researchers, particularly those who are highly attuned to industry needs through their long-standing relationships with Paprican.
4. Research on bugs producing considerable cost savings for Newfoundland’s largest forestry company and its provincial government
Thanks to a partnership with researchers at the University of New Brunswick, Newfoundland’s largest forestry company is gradually gaining the upper hand on costly insects that can devour as many trees as the company harvests each year.
In western Newfoundland, hundreds of millions of dollars in forest resources are constantly threatened by defoliating insects. Depending on the severity of the outbreaks, these pests will devour and kill as many trees as are harvested by Newfoundland’s largest forestry company and the region’s biggest private sector employer, Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Ltd. (CBPPL), a division of Kruger Inc.
Fortunately, CBPPL and Newfoundland’s Department of Natural Resources are gradually gaining the upper hand on these costly bugs, thanks in large measure to a series of NSERC-funded collaborative R&D (CRD) projects led by Dr. Dan Quiring, a population ecology entomologist at the University of New Brunswick (Fredericton).
With funding from the company and the province, Dr. Quiring, along with scientists at the Université Laval (Dr. Eric Bauce) and the Canadian Forest Service (CFS) (Drs. Lucie Royer, Johanne Delisle and Christian Hébert), recently completed a three-year, $240,000 CRD investigation into hazard ratings for the hemlock looper—a caterpillar defoliator that can kill conifers in two years or less.
A key discovery, says Quiring, is that the looper’s eggs are vulnerable to parasitism during the spring. This finding, he explains, has huge implications for the timing of sampling activities that feed into decisions about where to conduct aerial spraying of Bacillus thuringiensisi (Bt), a bacterium that annihilates caterpillar defoliators like the looper and the infamous spruce budworm.
Stephen Balsom, Planning Forester with CBPPL, says Quiring’s team has provided the company and the province with valuable decision-support information.
"These research findings have helped the province fine tune its Bt spray program, particularly to avoid unnecessary spraying. With better decisions about spraying we can save a lot of money, because it is very costly."
In Newfoundland, the cost of selective Bt aerial spraying to combat the looper can range as high as $2 million annually. CBPPL must shoulder the cost of applications to portions of its two million hectares of timber limits.
Hubert Crummey, an entomologist with the provincial Forest Insect Control Program, says the findings of Quiring’s team have allowed for better assessment of potential infestation for the following season. "This research has already produced considerable savings. It’s an easy trade-off between spending millions on biological treatment or spending thousands to get really good information from the university researchers."
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