Industry Collaborations

Collaborate With Us

Welcome to Western Engineering!  Western Engineering is actively working with business to the benefit of staff, students, faculty and our city.  With world-class researchers, students and facilities, Western Engineering is committed to the community and establishing and building relationships with partners in industry.  We are open for business!!!

Working with Us

There are many ways in which Western Engineering faculty, staff, and students engage with industry.  We offer internships and co-op programs for our students.  Our researchers lead outstanding programs with a balance of discovery-driven and applied projects.  Our research institutes, centres and groups provide teams of expertise and unique facilities available to support you.  We also have a number of unique technical service oriented facilities, such as the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory, the Geotechnical Research Centre, Fraunhofer Innovation Platform for Composites Research, and University Machine Services.  For more information, or to find an expert, please contact: Laura Moxey, Research Officer, Industrial Relationships, Faculty of Engineering (519.661.2111 x 88345).

Stretching Your Research $

We encourage our researchers to meaningfully engage with industry partners in their fields - listening, learning, and partnering to solve science and engineering challenges in their business.  We bring access to specialized facilities, new knowledge and perspective, outstanding students and staff, and where possible, reduce the risk by sharing the costs.  There are a number of research partnership programs that Western Engineering researchers regularly access to help support our university-industry research projects and help to stretch that industry dollar a little bit further.  Here is a quick snap shot of a few of our most popular programs:

NSERC

Alliance Grants  - Alliance grants encourage university researchers to collaborate with partner organizations, which can be from the private, public, or not-for-profit sectors. These grants support research projects led by strong, complementary, collaborative teams that will generate new knowledge and accelerate the application of research results to create benefits for Canada. Alliance Grants can be one to five years in length. Direct project costs are shared by the partner organization(s) and NSERC, and can range in size and scope. NSERC will fund $20,000 to $1,000,000 per year, representing 50% to 100% of the project costs (leveraging ratios depend on the type of project and the size of the partner organization(s)).

Idea to Innovation (I2I) - I2I Grants accelerate the pre-competitive development of promising - university technology and promote its transfer to a new or established Canadian company.  For additional information, please see and contact  WORLDiscoveries®.

Ontario Centres of (OCI)  

Collaborate 2 Commercialize (C2C)  - The OCI C2C program (formerly VIP) supports the collaboration between academia and industry to dolve an industy-based problem and drive the commercialization of Intellectual Property [IP]. Universities leverage the unique skills and specialized infrastructure that is instrumental to streamline internal innovations and commercialization needs, resulting in targeted training of individuals and direct engagement with industry to work on commercially viable solutions. To determine  if your project idea or need is suitable for the C2C program, please contact Jeff van Heumen, our OCI Business Development Director. 

Industrial Training Programs

Mitacs

Accelerate  -  Mitacs Accelerate Internships support graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.  The program enables an intern to spend approximately half of their time on-site with the industry partner and the other half at the university.  Internships run in 4-month blocks allowing each internship to be tailored to the project scope.  Individual interns can be working on an Accelerate internship for anywhere from 4 months to 2 years.  Projects of broader scope can be facilitated by our Mitacs Business Development Director and can include multiple interns and academic supervisors, as well as multiple universities.  Mitacs Accelerate is a program with rolling deadlines and a high success rate.  For further information, please contact Joseph Santarelli, the Western Engineering Mitacs Business Development Director.

Elevate -  Mitacs Elevate is a competitive program that develops skills of postdoctoral fellows in Canada and builds capacity for R&D management in various academic, industrial and non-profit sectors. Over the two-year fellowship, Elevate fellows develop career-ready skills in areas such as project management, entrepreneurship and presentation skills, while applying both their expertise and professional skill set in the real-world environment of their partner organization through a 2-year research project. For every $1 of a partner organization’s $25,000 contribution, Mitacs provides $1.30 in matching funds for a total research grant of $57,500 per year ($50,000 towards the fellows stipend and $7,500 to support their research expenses). For further information, please contact  Joseph Santarelli, the Western Engineering Mitacs Business Development Senior Advisor.

OCI

TalentEdge Internship Program - This stream of the Next Generation Network Program (NGNP) provides support for current college and university students and recent undergraduate or Masters graduates, to work on industry-driven research and development projects related to Next Generation Network (NGN) technologies at Ontario-based SMEs using the Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks (CENGN) platform. Companies can tap into world-class talent coming out of Ontario’s publicly-funded post-secondary institutions and strengthen their capacity to develop new products, services and processes, while interns receive hands-on industry experience to excel in the digital economy. For more information, please contact  Jeff van Heumen, our OCI Business Development Director.   

TalentEdge Fellowship Program - This new fellowship program provides support for Ontario-based postdoctoral fellows (PDFs) to work on industry-driven research and development projects.  The TalentEdge Fellowships are intended to provide fellows with the opportunity to work with an industry partner on a cutting edge research and development project and gain hands-on industry experience.  Fellows are required to spend a portion of their time on-site or in the field with the industry partner.  Each 12-month fellowship is valued at $85,000 - with $32,500 from OCE in cash and $2500 for professional development, and $25,000 in cash and $25,000 in in-kind from the industry partner. A fellow may hold a maximum of two consecutive fellowships over 24 months.   For more information, please contact Jeff van Heumen, our OCI Business Development Director.   

Joint Funding Programs

NSERC Alliance and Mitacs Accelerate Streamlined Funding Opportunity –  This joint funding opportunity allows applicants to leverage cash contributions from partners for funding from both NSERC and Mitacs. To take advantage of this opportunity, applicants must complete an NSERC Alliance application and may request additional support through Mitacs Accelerate internships as a component of the training of highly qualified personnel (HQP). This new opportunity is available to Canadian researchers through a single application submission and review process with a rolling deadline. For direct questions, please contact Laura Moxey , Research Officer, Industrial Relationships, Faculty of Engineering (519.661.2111 x 88354) and/or Joseph Santarelli, the Western Engineering Mitacs Business Development Senior Advisor.

NSERC Alliance and OCI C2C Joint Funding Opportunity  supports post-secondary R&D collaborations with the highest potential for regional economic development and commercialization in Ontario. Individual proposals can request at least $20,000 up to $30,000 from NSERC Alliance Grant and at least $20,000 up to $30,000 from OCI C2C (formerly VIP), with a corresponding $10,000 to $15,000 cash from the industry partner. The streamlined joint application and decision process enables companies to quickly undertake new research collaborations with Ontario-based researchers and have their cash contribution leveraged by both NSERC and OCI. The mutually beneficial projects are expected to result in economic benefits to the company and to Ontario and build impactful longer term collaborations between the researcher and the company. For direct questions, please contact Laura Moxey, Research Officer, Industrial Relationships, Faculty of Engineering (519.661.2111 x 88354) and/or Jeff van Heumen, our OCI Business Development Director.

Intellectual Property (IP)

“How does Western handle IP?” or “What is Western’s IP policy?” – These are typical and important questions for our partners.  All industry projects (involving cash contributions to the university) are governed by research agreements.  All agreements are to be negotiated and signed by Research Development and Services at Western (not by individual faculty members).  If you have any questions or concerns, or would like to explore terms and conditions or IP issues, we encourage you to contact  Caroline Calmettes, Director of Research Contracts and Agreements. She would be pleased to assist you.

Interested in a Western Engineering Innovation?

WORLDiscoveries® is the Business Development arm of London’s extensive research network and the bridge between local invention and global industry.

Born out of a partnership between Western University, Robarts Research Institute and Lawson Health Research Institute, WORLDiscoveries® draws upon a mix of industry connections, sector-specific market knowledge and business development expertise, to help researchers and local inventors commercialize their discoveries through licensing and new company spin-offs. Please feel free to contact WORLDiscoveries® for more information.

Where to begin ?

Not certain which program is right for you?  Feel free to contact  Laura Moxey, Research Officer,Industrial Relationships, Faculty of Engineering (519.661.2111 x 88354). She will be happy to assist.