Canada's R&D; Leadership in Information & Communications Technologies Academic Support for ICT R&D;
Canada's major universities receive their core funding from
government, as does a secondary web of community-based colleges. This
public commitment to education in Canada has created a high level of
post-secondary enrolment and a highly educated workforce. A list of
universities can be found at http://www.aucc.ca/ and community colleges
at http://www.accc.ca/.
General Characteristics of Academic ICT R&D
Canada's research-intensive universities are all full-fledged,
multidisciplinary institutions. Typically ICT R&D is not confined
exclusively to the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
departments. This broad view of ICT has enriched the R&D
environment.
All of our major universities and an increasing number of the
community colleges have collaborations with major ICT companies as
well as with spin-offs emerging from their own campuses, typically
facilitated by well-managed technology transfer functions.
The section of this paper titled "A Highly Networked R&D
Community" describes how both government and the private sector
have helped build up particular expertise, across the university
network, in optoelectronics, multimedia, wireless, database software
and other specialised fields. The result is highly collaborative
research by universities from coast to coast.
Community colleges are pushing to play a greater role in the
R&D/innovation arena and are attempting to build stronger ties
with the university community to not only increase interaction but to
alleviate concerns that increased R&D funding for colleges will
occur at their expense. Current estimates place college level R&D
funding at $200 million annually, much of it is with local businesses.
However, this is now changing as evidenced by Cisco Systems'
contribution to establish a research chair in network engineering
technology at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology.
The quality of Canadian universities is very high. The Gourman Report,
an independent US-based assessment of university faculties, places 10
Canadian electrical engineering programs in the top 22 throughout all
of North America. Canada's Computer Science programs receive
similarly high ratings. The Gourman Report ranked seven Canadian
Computer Engineering programs in the top 20 in North America.
Most of Canada's universities offer academic programs in Computer
Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering. The following sample
of universities from across the country is actively performing
research in Information & Communications Technologies. The
principal URL for each institution is provided as are the URLs for ICT
related academic programs. This will lead the reader into the areas of
ICT research performed by the academic institution. For a complete
listing of universities and their academic programs, please refer to
http://www.aucc.ca/ . A
representative listing of Community Colleges follows the university
listing.
Universities
University of British Columbia - Vancouver, British
Columbia, http://www.ubc.ca/
Faculty of Applied Science, Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering http://www.ece.ubc.ca/
Faculty of Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering and
Department of Computer Engineering (reorganised June 1/01). Also
includes the Microelectronics Research Centre.
The following is a brief listing of Community Colleges and Institutes
engaged in ICT research. A complete listing of Community colleges and
Institutes as well as their URL's can be found at http://www.accc.ca/.
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