Research into research

Federal panel to find ways to better integrate government labs with universities and private sector

TESSA VANDERHART, STAFF

An “expert panel” on federal laboratories will investigate ways to improve the research output of government labs by partnering with universities and private companies, the Treasury Board announced last week.

Arnold Naimark, a U of M medicine professor, dean and president emeritus, will serve as chair of the panel mandated to focus on four objectives: “increasing the impact of federal investments in research, fostering research excellence, enhancing learning and transfer of knowledge, and leveraging the strengths of government, university and private sector research,” according to the Treasury Board website.

“We’ll look at the possibility of developing new relationships with industry and academia, to get the biggest bang out of our buck in investments in research,” Naimark said.

The panel will investigate only research-intensive labs that have a function similar to university research, and not regulatory labs — those involved in monitoring things like food or drug inspection.

Naimark said it’s been suggested that the governmental labs could benefit greatly from more links to universities, and that some already are. At the University of Manitoba, for example, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has a research facility on the Fort Garry campus. Numerous other projects exist, Naimark said, but the panel is charged with finding ways to encourage more partnerships and partnerships that are stronger.

“What needs to happen from the standpoint of universities and industry . . . is there some bureaucratic red tape that could be removed?”

Naimark said that it’s too early to say what options the panel will focus on, but will remain open to the responses of members of the research community.

The push to find new ways of managing federal research is partly the result of a May 2007 report titled Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada’s Advantage, which outlined the science and technology component of the 2007 budget.

The report notes, among other things, that in 2005-06 the federal government provided $1 billion in research funding to for-profit private companies, $2.7 billion to universities, and $5 million for in-house research. In total, the private sector performed $14.7 billion of research that year, and higher education institutions $9.9 billion, the remainder funded by provinces ($1.1 billion nationally) and university-private partnerships, like those in SMARTpark at the University of Manitoba.

U of M associate vice-president (research) Digvir Jayas said the panel will ask, “Is there a better way of integrating federal labs and universities?” Jayas stressed that “mutually beneficial” partnerships will include many different approaches for unique projects and universities and the transfer of money for infrastructure and wages as well as the sharing of information.

In particular, Jayas said that the U of M could benefit from a centre of excellence for field crops, in which a concentration of federal scientists working in that area could join researchers in the faculty of agriculture to “create a critical mass for both research and teaching.”

Jayas added that the main ways the federal government could improve the quality of research at universities includes increasing spending for more tri-council (SSHERC, NSERC, and CIHR) funding for individual research projects — often matched by the private sector — and creating more spots for Canada Research Chairs. He also noted that more funding for international student exchanges would contribute to the quality of research at Canadian universities.