How do we create experiential learning opportunities for students that advance industry R&D needs in Canada’s robotics sector?
 

On-the-job skills training provides students with the essential skills and network needed to enter and succeed in a robotics career. It also provides companies with a low-risk opportunity to trial prospective employees, strengthen their recruitment pipelines through connections with Canadian universities and colleges, and advance their innovation agenda. Nonetheless, Canadian robotics graduates must often leave the country to find work in their chosen field, companies fail to tap into leveraged funding opportunities, and faculty find that companies’ innovation ambitions and R&D dollars are not aligned with the best-in-class research they are known for.

Internship, coop, MITACS BSI and Accelerate programs can provide the framework, supports and financial incentives to make on-the-job training and the resulting skilled workforce and R&D available to students and companies alike. But are existing programs sufficient to ensure that Canadian robotics students find a job here in their chosen field when they graduate? And are they tuned to meet the needs of the companies that are most in need of funding supports and which will make the best use of R&D dollars?

This roundtable will assemble stakeholders from universities, industry and MITACS to identify the programmatic, funding and partnership gaps needed to accelerate robotics R&D among Canadian businesses while creating on-the-job training and career pathways for Canadian robotics students. 

Key questions include:

• What kind of robotics innovation needs does industry have in the short, mid and longer term? Are there common focus areas? What are companies looking for in a university partnership?

• Are companies, and especially SMEs, able to access the programs that could serve their R&D needs? 

• How do we ladder industry partners up from Business Strategy Internships to Accelerate programs? What role can MITACS play in closing the gap?

• How can MITACS create long term relationships with industry partners to speed up the application process?

• How do we ensure students have the job-ready skills they need when the graduate? How can we ensure that students are adequately funded so that they can accept offers at Canadian universities?

• What makes an ideal industry partner, from a university perspective? And how can SMEs be supported to be better partners for R&D?

• What does industry mean by “job-ready” students? What specific skills are students missing when they arrive on the job, that could be filled by industry-university partnerships?

• How can universities cooperate to share their students’ capabilities to industry?

• How do we close the gap between what industry wants and what researchers want out of student research placements?