Competition launched for industrial R&D internships

Ottawa, ON – The federal government has launched the Industrial Research and Development Internships (IRDI) program to create new opportunities for science and technology graduates. It is providing $8.64 million in funding over the next two years will create internships with the participating businesses for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows.

The program will introduce interns to practical business problems while allowing them to apply their expertise to help meet the research needs of Canada’s private sector. The program, which will be administered by the secretariat of the Networks of Centres of Excellence, follows a successful, established model developed by the Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems (MITACS) NCE.

“The NCEs have always been about bringing together the best and brightest people from academia and the private sector,” said Dr Suzanne Fortier, chair of the NCE steering committee and president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. “We are therefore proud to be involved in this exciting new program. The IRDI will help develop highly qualified people who can take the expertise and knowledge they acquired in university and apply it in a business environment.”