Nova Scotia Increases Investment in Innovation

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT--Nova Scotia Increases Investment in Innovation

Nova Scotia is investing $5 million to boost research excellence at universities, colleges and hospitals.

The support will go toward equipment, labs and databases for eight projects that also won funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI).

"These projects will make us better innovators in key growth sectors, and we know that innovators prosper," said Economic Development Minister Ernest Fage. "The projects will benefit important sectors like agriculture, the life sciences and information technology, and should lead to new therapies and drugs that improve our health as well."

Nova Scotia's contribution includes:

• $1.7 million to create Dalhousie Internet Networking Lab, Dalhousie University;
• $1.13 million to establish Canadian Centre for Vaccinology, Dalhousie University;
• $300,000 to Canadian Pain Trials Network, Dalhousie University;
• $240,000 to Centre of Excellence in Materials Discovery, Dalhousie University;
• $146,000 to establish Chemoinformatics and Drug Discovery Lab, Dalhousie University;
• $280,000 to create Atlantic Canadian Poultry Research Centre, Nova Scotia Agricultural College;
• $219,000 to major project in applied geomatics for environmental health monitoring, Nova Scotia Community College's Centre of Geographic Sciences;
• $194,000 to develop Acadia Digital Culture Observatory, Acadia University.

"Universities welcome the opportunity to work with the community to find ways to build the knowledge economy," said Dalhousie University's vice-president of research, Carl Breckenridge. "Investments like this help universities build their capacity for research and offer local firms access to the research tools and expertise they need to get their ideas to market."

The province's investment also includes a commitment of $253,000 to the Nova Scotia Research and Innovation Trust Fund, which levers investment through the CFI. In the last several years, the fund has leveraged investments of at least $60 million in Nova Scotia's research infrastructure.

The remaining $500,000 of the investment announced today is allocated to the Brain Repair Centre in Halifax, which conducts clinical research into neurological disorders. The centre will use the funding to help cover operational costs while it sets up trusts and other self-sustaining methods of fundraising over the long term.

The Canada Foundation for Innovation is an independent corporation created in 1997 by the government of Canada to fund research infrastructure. The CFI's mandate is to strengthen the ability of Canadian universities, colleges, research hospitals, and other non-profit institutions to carry out world-class research and technology development that will benefit Canadians.