$1.75M has been announced to update Niagara College's Technology Access Centre.
The federal grant will go towards improvements to Niagara College’s Walker Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Centre, located at the Welland campus.
The investment allows Niagara College to partner with local companies to provide them with unique technological or process solutions, laboratories and equipment, and highly trained students who are career ready.
“This renewal ensures that our student research assistants, who work alongside our experts and industry partners, will continue to access and participate in trailblazing research and development at Niagara College – an opportunity that provides unparalleled career-ready advantages,” said Niagara College President, Sean Kennedy.
“This is exciting news, as it allows us to further our delivery of high-quality services to area SMEs, in order to enhance their global competitiveness,” said Marc Nantel, PhD, Vice-President, Research, Innovation and Strategic Enterprises at Niagara College. “We are able to better serve the innovation needs of these companies who may have had difficulty developing new products and services for lack of affordable research expertise, equipment, and facilities.”
This is the third five-year grant for the centre, which has served approximately 275 businesses with more than 400 technical services and 150 applied research projects through its first two TAC grants.
One of the research project collaborations involves Airbus.
“For Airbus, it’s a capacity issue. We’re busy dealing with technical and manufacturing issues on a day-to-day basis, and these are the types of projects that can take a few weeks to complete,” said Brock Husak, Manufacturing Project Engineer, Airbus and a Niagara College, Research & Innovation alumnus. “By outsourcing projects like this, we can keep our focus on production as the tool/fixture is designed. I knew this was a perfect fit for WAMIC, so we called upon them to be our extra set of hands.”
