RESEARCHERS GET NEW FUNDING TO HIRE STUDENTS

NBIF’s Research Assistantships Initiative a win-win for New BrunswickFREDERICTON, (NB)–The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation (NBIF) today announced new funding totaling $500,000 to support 65 student research assistant positions at the province’s post-secondary institutions.

“Part of our mandate at NBIF is to create opportunities that allow students to learn that turning something from a concept into a reality is indeed possible,” says NBIF President and CEO Calvin Milbury, “our Research Assistantships Initiative expands the province’s capacity to do research by letting professors put some of their students to work.

The funding, provided in partnership with the New Brunswick Department of Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour (PETL), will allow the province’s most active applied researchers to put graduate and undergraduate students to work in the laboratory.

“Putting students to work in the lab is essential for researcher success, especially when they have a number of research programs on the go,” says Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour Minister Martine Coulombe, “by participating, students develop some of the skills and discipline they need to work in other laboratories in the future.”

Since 2003, the Foundation and PETL have worked together to award over $6 million leveraging $27 million more to support 695 research assistantships in New Brunswick.

“Research assistantships are an essential component of the NBIF programs meant to develop research in the province of New Brunswick,” says Roger Gervais, Vice-President of Research at NBIF, “it is and will be an important tool for the economic development of our province.”

The deadline for applications for the 2011 Research Assistantships Initiative is January 31, 2011. You can obtain full details on the NBIF website at:

www.nbif.ca/eng/research/rai