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Home > About Us > News Room > News Releases > Student Scholarships to Double in Value Student Scholarships to Double in Value
April 02, 2007 -- TRLabs has announced a 50% increase in student scholarship values, effective September 1, 2007.
"Student quality drives the quality of invention with commercialization potential," said TRLabs President & CEO Dr. Roger Pederson. "Attracting the best and the brightest is a winning proposition for our university faculty who demand high quality research, and for industry that seeks both high value technology with market potential and high quality personnel as employees. Students benefit from TRLabs' 21 year history of successfully marrying academic pursuits with direct engagement with industry, and the resulting high demand for their skills in the marketplace when they graduate."
Scholarship values will remain at $12,000 for the first year of a graduate program, doubling to $24,000 per annum for Years 2-4 of a PhD program and Year 2 of a Master's program. The increase is applicable to existing students contingent on a successful annual performance review conducted by a supervisor. NSERC Fellowship recipients will receive 'top-up' support of $6,000 in Year 1 and $9,000 in Years 2+. Scholarship values are back-end loaded to Years 2+ of a graduate program to recognize student transition from a class-intensive to a project-intensive program, and the corresponding ability to contribute more strongly to TRLabs' research and development (R&D) work with industry partners.
"Our vision is to be Canada's most effective R&D commercialization vehicle for information and communications technology," said Pederson. "Moving forward, re-purposing TRLabs resources to enhance scholarship levels and complete more projects will be key success factors for a TRLabs that is results-driven." Pederson noted that TRLabs' growth opportunity lies in a focus on industry-relevant research themes that will persist over the long term while simultaneously delivering shorter-term results in the form of proof-of-concept prototypes and applications, technology demonstrations, testing and verification, and pre-commercialization assistance. The result - fast tracking of innovation into the marketplace - reflects a mandate that has shifted toward accelerated applied research and development and commercialization support activity.
The scholarship announcement is complemented by a number of recent operational adjustments directed at enhancing TRLabs outputs, including consolidation of the pooled research program into three research themes (Telecom, eHealth, and eHome), initiation of subscribed research activity that generates opportunity for industry to pursue research of interest to specific industry members, a new membership structure that lowers barriers to industry participation in research and development activity, creation of an industry-led Research Advisory Board to drive industry-relevancy, and announcement of a fund that will award Inventor's Prizes annually for technology output deemed to have strong commercialization potential.
About TRLabs
TRLabs creates innovative technologies and trains students to enhance ICT expertise and improve Canada's global competitiveness. Labs in Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Regina, and Winnipeg employ 210. With 50 partner members representing a unique synergy of industry, government, and university, technology and applications research focuses on three research themes: Telecom; eHealth; and eHome. In its 21 year existence, TRLabs has trained 840 highly skilled university graduates, created 310 technologies adopted for use by companies, and generated 161 patents issued or filed.