Federal funding boosts R&D at Cambrian College

FedNor funds research at Cambrian College The federal government is providing $385,000 to support research and development at Sudbury's Cambrian College.

Thursday in Sudbury, local MPs were on hand for a FedNor announcement of money to help Cambrian College accelerate research and development and support local businesses commercialize new products.

Two new positions will be created at the college to oversee the production and assembly of prototypes and products benefiting student learning and research and development in northern Ontario.

The research and development department at Cambrian College is receiving almost $385,000 from FedNor to hire an engineer and a welding fabrication technologist to support production and assembly of prototypes and new products.

"Cambrian College is one of the top 50 research colleges across Canada and so they already have a really reputation for research and development," said Sudbury Liberal MP Viviane Lapointe.

"We really are, as a federal government, enabling them to do even more."

"This is a boost for our staff complement here," added Mike Commito, Cambrian's director of research and development.

"It will allow us to hire more students because we will have more supervision around here and we will also be able to work with more industry partners because we will have more staff (who are) able to take on more projects and help accelerate all of the exciting innovation that is happening here in the North."

Jacob Greenough, a third-year mechatronics student, is working on a 3-D printer to create a part for a mini underground scoop, one of many research and development projects he has worked on.

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"Maybe a company will have an idea (for) a greener product, but they don’t want to go full out on it," Greenough said.

"Research and development can be an easy path for them to say, 'here, we want to test this idea, can you guys please test it for us?'"

Cambrian officials said students are paid work on R&D projects. The FedNor funding will help support the development of 60 prototypes and products in the next three years.