3 minute read
the last woRd
By Dr. Gilles Patry
BUSINESSES TAKE NOTE:
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University labs are a storehouse of top-notch research capability
dr. gilles Patry
is President and CEO of the Canada Foundation for Innovation. Visit the CFI Research Facilities Navigator at Innovation.ca/ navigator.
Last fall, Keith Warriner, a food scientist at the University of Guelph, was approached by a small tea brewing business with an age-old biotechnology problem: How can a fermentation process be scaled-up without throwing the balance of microbes out of whack and spoiling the product?
The one-woman company had been brewing kombucha — a popular fermented tea purported to have a detoxifying and energizing effect — from her kitchen for years when a large grocery chain agreed to market her product. After chucking out several spoiled batches, she turned to Warriner’s lab, desperate to refi ne her new process to keep unwanted, potentially dangerous bacteria at bay, while maintaining the right balance of acetic acid bacteria and yeast to achieve the optimal fl avour for her product. Using DNA-fi ngerprinting equipment funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), Warriner’s team identifi ed precisely what bacteria are present in a good batch, and which bacteria were responsible for making the tea taste like nail polish remover. The businesswoman benefi ts from having a defi ned culture for her brewing process, and Warriner walks away with a real-life lesson about the complexities of fermentation to teach his students.
This is an example of what can happen when business and research come together. And this is one form of innovation — when a company fosters creativity by engaging researchers and gains an edge in the marketplace by fi nding an inventive solution to a problem. Supporting innovation of all kinds is at the core of the CFI’s three-fold mandate. As the leading federal organization devoted to funding research infrastructure in universities, colleges and research hospitals, the CFI ensures that Canada’s best researchers have access to the advanced labs and equipment necessary to conduct world-class research across all disciplines, and from discovery to applied research. Having the most cutting-edge tools helps to attract and retain top talent from around the world and provides a vibrant environment in which to train the next generation of researchers and innovators. The third element of our mandate is to enhance the capacity of our funded institutions to use their research infrastructure to support innovation and commercialization.
The collaboration between the tea brewing company and Warriner’s lab is one example of the kind of mutually benefi cial partnership that is happening across Canada: according to Statistics Canada, our universities conduct almost $1 billion worth of research in collaboration with the private sector annually, which provides “the intellectual raw material that drives innovation and builds prosperity.”
But it can be challenging for companies to tap into research resources at post-secondary institutions — they are either not aware of what resources they can access or they don’t know what kind of labs or expertise are available.
Clarifying this is the driver behind a new online tool the CFI launched last November, called the Research Facilities Navigator. This is a searchable directory of participating CFI-funded research labs and facilities in universities, colleges and research hospitals across Canada that are open to working with business. Almost 350 labs from virtually every discipline have submitted entries for the Navigator, and the number is growing. For research facilities, the Navigator is a way to promote their research capabilities to the private and public sectors; for companies, it is a venue to fi nd the research facilities that can help their business grow, stay competitive, design new or better products or processes, and foster relationships with highly skilled people.
Tapping into Canada’s incredible storehouse of research capability to open up a company’s potential is a notion that comes naturally to companies like the one Warriner helped and one that has repeatedly been proven in institutions across Canada. Making sure these connections continue and new connections are facilitated is what the Navigator is all about.
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