Algonquin has been named the top college in applied research activity in Canada by a national print vehicle that publishes Canada’s innovation leaders.
Research Infosource Inc., Canada’s source of R&D Intelligence, has declared the applied research and innovation department of the college as number one for the fiscal year 2013. The number of partnerships for that year were 120 and the number of projects completed were 180 – almost double the number achieved by the college that took the number two position.
The college has also seen a 27.9 per cent increase in the research income.
“I am ecstatic,” said Mark Hoddenbagh, the acting executive director of partnerships and applied research. “I think it’s a wonderful testament to the great work done by the college and the office of applied research and innovation in particular.”
Hoddenbagh said that the project managers, the principal investigators and the students who were involved in the projects are the ones who made them successful.
“I think it’s a wonderful testament to the work done by the college and the office of applied research and innovation in particular.”
“We work with a large cross-section of clients,” said Katherine Richardson, project manager in the office of applied research and innovation. “We are able to engage students from a lot of the programs at the college who get to work with the clients.”
Both Hoddenbagh and Richardson attest to the fact that students taking part in the research projects sometimes get hired by the clients on a full-time basis.
“Many times students who get hired by the client learn things that they don’t learn going through the program like soft skills, entrepreneurship and creativity,” said Hoddenbagh.
A total of six research centres across the college campus, including the Perth and Pembroke campuses, took part in the research activities covering a wide range of areas including website development, healthcare and mechanical engineering. A lot of the projects have been supported by funding agencies like Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Alexander Yang, project manager of the construction department in the applied research program, said that future plans for the department are to engage with more parties outside the institution in the form of local, regional and national companies as well as internal ones by connecting to the various departments within the institution.
“We will continue to improve our capacity, to deliver projects that benefit students so that they can be connected with real-world problems to be solved,” said Yang.
Hoddenbagh hopes to break the numbers this year as well and to achieve a total of 190 completed projects.
“Wait for the numbers to come out,” he said.