ontario centres of excellence (oce) and the centre of excellence in next generation networks (cengn) are supporting collaborative research and technology development (r & td) projects by ontario companies and academic research partners through oce’s voucher for industry association r&d challenge program.
cengn, canada's centre of excellence in next generation networks, is a consortium of industry, academic and research leaders dedicated to accelerating the commercialization of next generation communications solutions. cengn founding members include: alcatel-lucent, allstream, bti systems, cisco, ewa canada, exfo, invest ottawa, jdsu, juniper, mistral ventures, rogers and telus. cengn is an independent and internationally recognized testing center employing interoperability amongst multiple software and hardware products. cengn’s state-of-the-art physical and virtual multi-vendor, test, certification and validation platform provides a unique environment to commercialize advanced products, applications and services.
the next generation networks r&td challenge is a $2.1 million initiative supporting areas of technology that are strategically important to the network technologies and applications sector in ontario. the program is intended to accelerate commercialization for smes in this sector through collaboration with ontario academic institutions, leading to significant economic benefit for ontario (jobs, revenues, etc.).
how funding works
through this via program, oce and cengn will identify up to 10 eligible projects led by cengn industry members, which include ontario smes and require collaborative participation from ontario academic institutions. oce will identify potential academic collaborators for the selected projects. the selected academic researchers, in partnership with the project industry leads, will submit funding proposals to oce. qualified projects will address one or more strategic technology focus areas:
- software defined networks (sdn), network function virtualization (nfv), sd wan
- internet of things
- data centre or cloud
- network transport
- security
- network applications
- network mobility
- cengn common platform
oce will provide funding of up to $50,000 per project (up to two years in length). to qualify for oce funding, the industry partner(s) must provide a minimum of 1:1 matching cash contribution, plus in-kind contribution. an additional $25,000 cash contribution per project will be provided by cengn [i.e. for a $50,000 oce contribution, the matching contributions would consist of $50,000 cash and $85,000 in-kind (average) from the industry partner(s), and $25,000 cash from cengn]. oce funds will flow to the academic partner to support eligible expenses; the cengn and industry partner funds will remain with the industry partner to support expenses directly associated with the oce-funded project.
- see more at:
http://www.oce-ontario.org/programs/industry-academic-collaboration/coll...