Collaboration with industry is a positive activity all-round: industry gains the experience and knowledge of LSMR's faculty and graduate students, while LSMR gains a source of feedback about the practical issues faced in the real world.

Current and Past Collaborations

Our most recent collaboration is with Find it EZ Software Corp. on their product line involving dependency and impact analysis in polylingual systems.

Past collaborations have been in place with Chartwell Technology (on the Technical Risk Estimation project) and with IBM Canada (on the Pragmatic Software Reuse project).

Collaboration can involve being involved in a single study, to forming a longer term relationship in which the industrial partner helps with the training of students, and LSMR helps to solve practical problems.  Except for exceptional cases, collaboration requires financial support for students. 

Funding

The federal agency that funds science and engineering research in Canada is called the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).  The lowest risk mechanism for everyone involved is a recent one: the Engage Grant provides up to 25K in support for six months, with the expectation that it be used to fund students; this is sufficient (in 2015) to fund 1.5 graduate students for six months at the standard rate.  The Engage Grant requires NO matching funds, but a clear case for the benefit to Canada has to be made; its turnaround time is fast; and the industry partner automatically owns all IP accruing under the expectation that the academic partners be able to publish on the results. 

Other programs are more heavyweight in terms of the bureaucracy and delay involved: MITACS and the NSERC Collaborative Research and Development (CRD) Grant; these operate on a matching funds basis and have to undergo an academic peer review process.