New funding for high-tech research at Ontario universities

Toronto, ON April 1, 2003 More than C$9 million in funding is going to high-tech research projects at eight Ontario universities, from Communications and Information Technology Ontario (CITO) and industry partners. In this latest round of funding, CITO is providing $5.373 million and industry sponsors are contributing $3.730 million in matching cash or in- kind support.

Funding is being provided to research teams at Carleton, McMaster, Queen’s, Ryerson, University of Toronto, University of Ottawa, Waterloo and York. Areas of research include wireless networks and devices, the Internet, human/computer interface issues, health and medicine and information storage and retrieval.

“Over the last five years, CITO has injected more than $50 million into Ontario research projects,” says Dr. Darin Graham, president of CITO. “By funding leading-edge research and building links between Ontario universities and industry, we’re helping to grow Ontario’s communications, digital media and information technology (IT) industries.”

This year’s list of projects is notable in that it includes a number of awards for new professors those who have been in their position for less than five years. Also, industry sponsors include smaller and medium-sized enterprises as well as large companies such as Nortel, IBM and Microsoft.

CITO, an Ontario Centre of Excellence, is funded by the Ontario Ministry of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation. The OCE program creates and manages public and private research partnerships in Ontario.