News Release

FREDERICTON (GNB) – The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation today announced $1.4 million to fund 111 graduate and 62 undergraduate student researchers at five post-secondary institutions across the province, the largest amount in its 12-year history.

Awarded in partnership with the Department of Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour, the funds will be used to pay exceptional students to work part-time in the lab with their professor on research projects.

“Innovation fosters growth in New Brunswick, and it has a tremendous role to play in our efforts to create jobs and help families,” said Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour Minister Francine Landry. “That is why our government has declared May 3-10 Innovation Week and why we are proud to support the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation in its efforts to assist researchers and their students.”

The value of each assistantship is $5,000 for undergraduates and $10,000 for graduate students. The competition for assistantship funding occurs on an annual basis with decisions made by a committee of representatives from the foundation, the department, academia and business leaders.

“It is paramount that we continue to invest in people to accelerate innovation in our province,” said Calvin Milbury, CEO of the foundation. “That is why we are making this record investment, to provide the opportunity to more students than we have ever done before to gain hands-on experience in the lab and help our researchers commercialize their work.”

One project, led by mechanical engineering professor Amirkianoosh Kiani at the University of New Brunswick, will have three students working on new human implant materials. Kiani has developed a new surface for bone mending metals that encourage bone and soft tissue attachment and regeneration. The innovation will lead to less post-surgery rejections by the immune system and speed up healing and recovery.

“This is especially important for hip replacements in people of advanced age,” said Kiani. “Implant rejection correction can be painfully long and costly, and the better we get at putting foreign objects in the body that it will not reject, the more effective corrective surgery will become. After being in New Brunswick for just over a year, I am grateful to the foundation for giving both the students and my project this great opportunity for success. It definitely speeds things up.”

The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation is an independent, not-for-profit corporation that makes investments in new startup companies and research and development within established businesses and New Brunswick universities and research institutes. With $50 million invested plus $315 million leveraged from other sources, the foundation has 34 companies in its active portfolio and has invested in over 350 applied research projects. All of the foundation’s returns on investment go back into the foundation to startup new companies and research projects.