NBIF Awards $630,000 To Fund 70 Student Research Assistants

FREDERICTON, (NB) The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation today announced that it is awarding $630,000 to fund 70 student research assistant positions at the province’s post-secondary institutions. The funding will allow some of New Brunswick’s most active applied researchers to hire their most exceptional students to work with them in the lab.

The research projects that the students will be working on cover a wide spectrum of innovation, including systems that will allow multiple unmanned ground and air vehicles for the first time to automatically work together, and the application of a biotechnology  that could save the potato industry over $10 million per year by killing the bacteria that causes potato scabbing.

Read: University developing artificial intelligence in planes in The Telegraph Journal.

“It’s exciting to see students take an interest in the research work that their professors are doing, and when that happens, the opportunity to get involved with them on a professional level can make a big impact on their student life,” says Roger Gervais, vice-president of research at the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation, “students get to earn wages while they learn, and professors get the assistants that they need to keep their research projects on track.”

Awarded in partnership with the New Brunswick Department of Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour (PETL), the Foundation’s Research Assistantships Initiative allows students to obtain the professional experience that they need to gain future employment in their field, and undertake more advanced post-graduate studies. A full list of all 57 projects is available at http://nbif.ca/eng/investments/rai/2010/

Since 2003, the Foundation and PETL have worked together to award $6 million and leverage $21.6 million more to support 691 research assistantships in New Brunswick.

For fast facts on the two projects mentioned above or click here.