NBIF puts up $1.1 Million in new funding for research talent

The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation (NBIF) today announced $1.1 million in funding to hire more research assistants and technicians at New Brunswick universities and community colleges. The funding will be streamed through two of NBIF’s initiatives.

Awarded in partnership with the Department of Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour (PETL), the purpose of the initiatives is to increase New Brunswick’s capacity to do applied research and provide some of the resources needed to recruit and retain the province’s top students and post-graduate researchers. For the 2012 round, PETL is investing $950,000 and NBIF $150,000 into this initiative.

Of the total investment, $600,000 will be allocated to the Research Assistantships Initiative (RAI) with the remaining $500,000 for the Research Technicians Initiative (RTI). The RAI allows researchers to pay students up to $10,000 to work part time in their lab. Alternatively, the RTI gives researchers up to $75,000, over three years, to help create a new full time research position. RTI recipients are most often PhD trained researchers.

Since 2003, NBIF and PETL have jointly awarded $6.6 million to fund over 750 student research assistants, and $4 million to help create over 50 new professional research positions at a number of New Brunswick universities and research institutes.

One student that has benefited from the RAI is Alissa Sylvester, a geography major in her final year at Mount Allison University.

“Getting an assistantship has done more than help me financially, I’ve finally figured out what I want to do after I graduate in the spring; what I’m doing now,” says Mount Allison student Alissa Sylvester, “to show people the affect climate change and the melting Arctic is having on agriculture, especially in New Brunswick.” Sylvester is presently working with Dr Ian Mauro, Canada Research Chair in Human Dimensions of Environmental Change, who uses video to research and explain the affects climate change has on humans.

“The kind of work that I do is very specialized in the sense that it demands both professional research and video production skills,” says Dr Mauro, “to do the work that needs to get done, I can’t just bring in someone with video production skills alone. The RAI allowed me to give Alissa the training she needed to do both, and I’ve decided to hire her permanently after she graduates.”

Funding under the RAI and RTI programs is open to all New Brunswick Community Colleges, universities and qualified research institutes. The deadline for RAI applications is February 3, 2012, and RTI applications on March 1, 2012. For more information visit nbif.ca.