Small Equipment Grant to provide more funding for research labs
“Most researchers will have more success and we’ll be able to do more work if they have greater funding,” Winship says.
Leah Hennig On July 31, the Government of Alberta announced the Small Equipment Grant (SEG) through its Research Capacity Program. SEG will provide 35 research labs at the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary with $8.4 million in funding.
The press release stated that there would be a strong focus on health innovation, advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, and quantum science in this round of funding.
“Alberta’s universities are at the leading edge of research and innovation, developing solutions to many of the most pressing issues we face today,” Myles McDougall, the minister for advanced education, said in the press release.
“The reality is that research fields move so quickly,” Winship says
The Gateway spoke to Ian Winship, the associate vice-president for research development and services, about the new grant program. In addition to being an associate vice-president, Winship is the principal investigator at the Winship neuroscience lab.
His portfolio as an associate vice-president looks to support the U of A’s research community. Winship oversees a program related to infrastructure and getting funding for infrastructure on campus.
“Generally speaking, most researchers will have more success and be able to do more work if they have greater funding,” Winship said.
The SEG provides funding for tools or spaces that researchers need to do their work.
“The reality is that research fields move so quickly and so to really stay at the cutting edge of your research, most researchers need to update their equipment or get new equipment to support it in a variety of ways,” he said.
“Depending on the type of work they do, that can be a number of different kinds of equipment.”
Additionally, part of the U of A’s purpose is to train the next generation of researchers, Winship said.
“If we’re going to train the next generation that’s going to be at the cutting edge, they also need access to that equipment to learn on it, to apply it to their own studies,” he explained.
“These kinds of infrastructure programs are truly crucial because equipment tends to be expensive and its a challenge to find the funds.”
“Not all provinces have that,” Winship says
Winship said researchers are fairly fortunate in Canada. The federal government provides a program that researchers can apply to to get funds for the equipment and space needed for their research.
However, that doesn’t cover all the costs.
“That’s where we’re actually lucky in Alberta to have this [SEG] program because it allows researchers to apply to a provincial program for funds to make up the remainder of the costs of the equipment they need,” he said. “Not all provinces have that.”
Winship said that a $2.6 million investment, largely from the SEG, has allowed for the purchase of about $6.6 million in equipment this year. Over the last five years, through the Research Capacity Program, about $12 million from the provincial government has allowed for about $30 million in equipment.
