Research & Innovation Boréal

• Support and guidance in project development, including the development of funding applications and receiving ethical approval when necessary
• Identification of sources of funding and administrative management of projects, agreements, and reports
• Prototyping and concept validation
• Creation and sharing of tools and resources
• Access to the expertise of our highly qualified researchers
• Support from our students in your projects supervised by our researchers
• Access to our research and innovation facilities and to our state-of-the-art equipment

• Support and guidance in the development of funding applications and ethical evaluation requests
• Identification of funding source and administrative management of partnerships, projects, agreements, and reports
• Support for multidisciplinary collaboration initiatives and research partnerships
• Access to research and innovation facilities and state-of-the-art equipment
• Opportunities for internships, summer jobs, and part-time jobs for your students

The Province of Ontario issued its Commercialization Mandate Policy Framework in early 2022. The objective of Ontario’s Commercialization Mandate Policy Framework is to harness the intellectual property generated with the institution’s resources to achieve Ontario’s goal of ensuring that made-in-Ontario innovations benefit Ontarians.

Follow the link for the full statement: Commercialization of Intellectual Property Policy Statement

Collège Boréal is an innovative educational, cultural and community hub serving Ontario’s Francophone population. Its goal is to produce a highly qualified bilingual workforce that is engaged in French-speaking communities and contributes to the economic, social and cultural vitality of the province and the country. Visible and recognized, Collège Boréal enriches communities through the quality of its training and personalized services at its seven campuses and 34 sites in 27 communities across the province.

Newly formed in 2019, Research & Innvoation Boréal continues to innovate in order to remain a competitive provincial and national leader in applied research. Collège Boréal remains on the lookout for emerging research areas and themes and positions itself as a leader in the communities it serves, placing particular importance on collaboration with its communities and multi-sectoral research teams. Collège Boréal develops research partnerships with businesses, governments and communities to address their needs and current societal challenges. We work closely with small and medium-sized enterprises in our regions to provide innovative solutions to the challenges they face. Research projects allow us to jointly develop expertise in research and education for our students. They are at the heart of our research projects. By participating, they benefit from experiential learning opportunities, in-depth training in their field of study and exposure to future employers.

In our approach to IP and its commercialization, our greatest success lies in our ability to support innovation in partnership with companies, and to help them commercialize their products at their request. In fact, during the year 23-24, we supported our partners in accessing information related to IP and its commercialization. In particular, we supported the organization of an event entitled Innovation for a Greater Sudbury – IP 101 in collaboration with Laurentian University, Cambrian College, NORCAT Innovation, the Sudbury Regional Business Centre, and the Greater Sudbury Innovation District. The event focused on IP and how it can accelerate business growth, with presentations from a patent lawyer, the City of Greater Sudbury’s Director of Economic Development, and the owner of a private company that has benefited from IP commercialization. We took advantage of the event to chat with PIO members and share with them the needs of our partners.

Collège Boréal supports research initiatives in a multitude of fields, including the agricultural sector. Many of our partners approach us to develop projects related to the adoption and adaptation of new technologies. However, agriculture is not a sector that falls within the eligibility criteria for PIO services. In fact, to be eligible, the company must operate in one of the following sectors: medical technology and life sciences (not including agriculture), artificial intelligence, automotive technology, mining and advanced automotive manufacturing. In particular, we are working with an industrial partner on the development of a new agricultural greenhouse technology, and have been able to refer them to Assistance PI, the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program. Our greatest success in terms of IP support and commercialization is quantifiable in the organization and participation in an educational event, the sharing of tools and resources with partners in our twelve active research projects, and the training of our research teams, including some twenty students.

In March 2021, the three federal research funding agencies (i.e., the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)) launched the Tri-Agency Policy on Research Data Management. This policy promotes research data management and data stewardship practices among Canadian researchers. To this end, Canadian postsecondary institutions were asked to develop their own research data management (RDM) strategies and share them publicly on their websites.

Follow the link to access the full strategy (French only): Institutional Research Data Management Strategy