By Sarah O’Neill
NSERC offers an Industrial R&D Fellowship program which provides $30,000 of salary support per year for up to 2 years to assist Canadian based companies in hiring recent PhD graduates. The goal of the program is to promote the development of long-term research capacity in Canadian organizations (especially small and medium-sized ones) with the presence of highly qualified personnel.
Octane Medical Group, an innovative company in the field of regenerative medicine, knows the benefits of the program firsthand.
“We currently have a NSERC PDF scholarship underway here at Octane. This has been highly productive for us and already we have a new orthopedic product line under development by virtue of the increased resources. This type of support that increases specialized company talent is extremely important for high growth companies, as it allows lateral skunk-works projects to get serious attention. Based on the success, we will be proceeding with full time employment for this individual following the scholarship,” says Timothy Smith, CEO of Octane Medical Group.
The application process is simple to complete. Once your company has been approved as NSERC Eligible, it’s good for 6 years. The typical turnaround for the eligibility approval is about 4-8 weeks depending on the completeness of the received application. If you’re interested in applying for eligibility, please contact me and I will guide you through the steps to ensure that everything is completed properly, thus reducing your turnaround time.
Once your company is deemed eligible, and you’ve found a post doctoral student you’d like to hire you can complete the nomination procedure. If you like the sounds of this program, but need guidance on where to find a student with the right qualifications, please contact me for assistance.
Sarah O’Neill is the Communications and Promotions Officer at the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council’s Ontario regional office. Sarah can connect you with the information you need to know regarding NSERC’s partnership opportunities.
