If you saw Trevor Immelman drive a golf ball farther and harder that the rest of the field to win the 2008 Masters Tournament then you saw research from a Canadian university in action.

Project leader Iain Brooks tests a carbon-fibre composite golf club shaft created with nanotechnology by Integran Technologies, an offshoot of a Queen's University knowledge mobilization project PARTEQ Innovations. Photo: Glenn Lowson for The Globe and Mail

Project leader Iain Brooks tests a carbon-fibre composite golf club shaft created with nanotechnology by Integran Technologies, an offshoot of a Queen's University knowledge mobilization project PARTEQ Innovations. Photo: Glenn Lowson for The Globe and Mail

More Campus Research - Spring 2010 Reports

• Forsooth! Shakespeare benefits the bottom line
• Cold pizza, destitution and your dream: graduate research
• 3D printers are adding a whole new dimension to design
• What today's researchers are working on to make tomorrow a better place
• All fired up to exploit the sun's power
• Comment: Canada needs all universities to do research
• Colleges getting due respect for research

The shaft of his driver was made from Grafaloy, a revolutionary new nano-treated material that adds extra strength without increasing weight, and which was developed by Integran Technologies Inc. of Etobicoke, Ont.

Integran, in turn, was created by PARTEQ Innovations, the Queen's University unit responsible for commercializing research done by faculty members.

If the seasonings on your favourite snack food are in perfect balance, you might send a note of thanks to McMaster University. McMaster's research commercialization team spotted work being done by a professor using digital cameras to remedy irregularities on production lines, gave him support and space at its industrial park and the result was Prosensus Inc.

That company now makes process control monitoring equipment for a range of industries, including pharmaceuticals and snack foods.

By all accounts there is a treasure trove of potential new products hidden away in Canadian university research; all told they spend about $6-billion every year on research, says John Molloy, president of PARTEQ (the acronym stands for partners in technology at Queen's). But the challenge continues to be getting the fruits of that research to market.

"The trouble is new discoveries just aren't being turned into commercial products," Mr. Molloy says. "Universities don't feel that is their job and industry is not willing to assume the risk and financial burden to take discoveries to the next stage — proof of concept, identifying potential applications and building prototypes."

Yet at the same time there are more and more teams of men and women at universities charged with finding ways to bridge that gap between lab and factory. One on which great hopes are pinned is the creation of 15 new Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research.

At the same time, universities continue to have their own special departments focused on forming partnerships with industry — especially in the areas of technology and medicine — but that path always represents tough slogging, says Mo Elbestawi, vice-president of research and international affairs at McMaster University in Hamilton.

"The two chief problems are not enough university technical officers to work with industry and the absence of venture capital to see discoveries through the start-up stage," he says.

Those new Centres of Excellence (CECR) are designed to address both needs, says Rui Resendes, executive director of GreenCentre Canada at Queen's. It focuses on commercial applications of green chemistry and may well have some applications to license to industry by the end of this year, Mr. Resendes says.

"That is quite remarkable when you consider that traditionally it takes 7 to 12 years to develop new chemical products," he says. Remarkable, too, in that GreenCentre Canada has a staff of just 10 researchers, 10 commercial specialists and a budget commitment of just under $26-million over the next five years from the federal and provincial governments.

"In essence you have maybe $1-billion a year in research into chemistry funnelled through a centre with a budget of less than $5-million a year," Mr. Resendes says.

What makes those CECRs special is their approach, says Mr. Molloy. "One of the challenges we face is that no single university has sufficient critical mass of research in any one field to make commercialization possible."

The CERCs, however, act as a central repository for all university research across Canada in a particular field. The GreenCentre deals with green chemistry. The Centre for Drug Research and Development at the University of British Columbia brings together all university and teaching hospital research in that field.

There are also centres for applied physics, bio-industrial innovation, digital media, surgery, organ failure, energy efficiency and immunology and cancer.

"We are so pleased with what the GreenCentre has achieved that we are now looking at creating one at Queen's that deals with green electronics," says Mr. Molloy.

That vital link between researchers and industry comes from the board of directors of the centres, says Mr. Resendes. The GreenCentre, for example has executives from Ford Canada, Nova Chemicals Corp., Veolia Water Solutions and Pressure Chemicals Co. on its board.

"If we develop a new catalyst, they are right there to see if it will advance any of their own products."

While McMaster does indeed participate in research sharing through the CERCs, it continues to try and help development of its own research and also works with industry in two other key areas, says Mr. Elbestawi.

"We also provide contract research for companies large and small and help them source staff in key areas," he says.

"The problem is that big gap between research and commercialization continues. Government is playing a role but it is not big enough.

"Groups like the Conference Board of Canada continue to point out that when it comes to university research we are among the top nations in the world but when it comes to commercializing that research we rank well below most industrial nations."

Special to The Globe and Mail

EVEN BAPTISMAL FONTS CAN BE COMMERCIALIZED

As part of its growing efforts to commercialize research done by staff, the University of Toronto is about to launch a website giving access to the huge archive of baptismal fonts collected by its religion faculty.

Tens of thousands of pictures of those fonts, some dating back to the 12th Century will soon be online. Lino DeFacendis, one of the university's directors of commercialization, even dreams of the day when that archive may become a tourist draw.

"I can see people from all over the world coming here to share the research we have done for decades," he says. "You would be surprised at the number of people interested in baptismal fonts."

Perhaps more importantly, the U of T is shooting for more than a new kind of font-tourism. Like a growing number of universities, it is moving to commercialize all forms of research — including the religious — and not just those that some day may become consumer or industrial products.

"The future lies in exchanging all forms of research not just with industry but with government and with the community at large as well," says David Phipps, director of research and knowledge exchange at York University. "In past, the focus has been on technology. Now we are extending it to business, law, the social sciences and the humanities."

Mr. DeFacendis can see a treasure trove of possibilities at U of T's Rotman School of Management alone. Off the top of his head, he cites research into the best ways to develop businesses for entrepreneurs and the best practices when it comes to managing sustainability in industrial, commercial and retail buildings.

"Rotman has done all the research. Now we are looking at ways to share it with the people who need it most," he says.

At York, Mr. Phipps has two full-time staff working on what he calls knowledge mobilization. To date, they work with the United Way of York Region and The Human Services Planning Coalition of York Region, which represents 15 different social services agencies.

Representatives from those agencies meet regularly with York researchers for what he calls KM in the AM — a knowledge management breakfast — where the agencies get to pick what area of research they want to hear about and a York professor specializing in that area delivers a presentation.

"After that we leave it to the agencies and the professors to follow up," he says.

"To date about 60 per cent of our efforts to help commercialize research has been in medicine," says Mr. DeFacendis. "But there is so much more that we can share and share with almost everyone."