From aerospace systems to childhood literacy rates, from deep learning to leveraging culture change theory to help employers understand what matters to their staff, we believe that increasing Canada’s productivity and prosperity will be driven by successful innovation across our economy. By focusing on the continuum of innovation, Mitacs plays a unique and critical role in strengthening academia-industry cooperation in research and development — from STEM to social sciences, humanities, and arts — improving the attraction and training of highly qualified personnel.
Research priority areas
Advanced manufacturing
The manufacturing industry is tightly woven into the Canadian economy, and companies looking to remain competitive — both domestically and globally — must evolve the way they work and the goods they produce. Whether it’s digitization, prototyping, robotics, or developing sustainable technologies, advanced manufacturing plays an ever more vital role.
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Artificial intelligence
Mitacs has long been a pioneer in Canada’s AI ecosystem, and we’ve built strong research collaborations between industry and academia for over 20 years. With our knowledge and expertise, Mitacs enables Canadian companies to explore cutting edge AI and create a vital talent pipeline to maintain Canada’s leadership role.
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Cleantech
Canada has bold plans for the clean technology sector, promising to lead the way both as a developer and as an exporter of cutting-edge clean technology. But we know there are challenges to getting your technology to market; budgetary, finding the right research talent, scaling operations, and navigating governmental regulations.
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Cybersecurity
The threats of data breaches or ransomware are more pronounced than ever. And it doesn’t matter whether you are a large business, a local government, or a student with a laptop – the information you store is vulnerable to theft or attack. That’s why Mitacs is funding the most talented cybersecurity researchers in the country so they can work with the most sophisticated developers to secure networks and create applications to protect the data that is critical to our innovation ecosystem.
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Health & Life Sciences
Canada has a bold plan for the health & life sciences sector: become a top-three global hub by 2025. Currently we sit fourth. But by propelling innovative technologies, building on an already strong infrastructure, and ensuring we have a strong and retainable talent pipeline – all of which are at the heart of what Mitacs stands for – Canada should easily be able to achieve that ambitious goal.
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Information and communications technologies
5G technology will impact every aspect of our lives, from communications and transportation to healthcare and agriculture. And because it has 100x the data transmission speeds and 10-fold latency compared with 4G, 5G will accelerate the development of technologies such as AI, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things. For Canadian companies, the opportunities are huge.
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Quantum computing
Call it the “fourth industrial revolution”. Driven by things like artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, and cybersecurity, it is transforming the global marketplace. At its core is quantum computing which will solve complex problems beyond the abilities of even the most powerful of today’s supercomputers. Areas such as drug development, finance and, critically, climate change are just a few of the fields that will take giant leaps forward with the advent of quantum computing.
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Social innovation
At Mitacs, we believe social innovation is a vital element in the innovation ecosystem. By broadening the types of innovation, Mitacs enables and ensures impact is inclusive by design and aims to improve the well being of Canadians. We are committed to developing partnerships and projects that help communities of people to make progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goals. From examining the social value of the arts to researching adoption of ethical practices in the tech industry, and working within both the private and the not-for-profit sectors, community-engaged research has direct and immediate impact on the wider community.
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