Supporting the Economic Recovery of SMEs in PEI's Biotechnology, Food Processing and Clean Tech Sectors

通过合作研发，支持爱德华王子岛生物技术、食品加工和清洁技术领域的中小企业复苏，对岛屿经济至关重要。这些行业也未能幸免于新冠疫情的影响，面临人员配备、供应链等方面的挑战，从追求创新转向维持运营。该计划确定了荷兰学院（HC）战略专业知识的关键领域，这些领域将支持与行业合作伙伴合作的短期和中期创新研发项目，从而为合作公司和组织带来立竿见日的成果和利益，从而促进从停滞不前的增长期中脱颖而出。具体而言，已经确定了12个新的行业驱动项目，并对其进行了全面评估，重点是为这些行业合作伙伴创造短期回报，例如从食品垃圾中创造新价值，推进技术以改善环境产出和缩短上市时间，以及改进流程以节省成本和转移产能。在这项计划的未来两年里，将发展新的关系，巩固现有的关系。这些双向合作将为公司人员再培训和培训带来新的机会，获得研发专业知识，开发新的知识产权，创造新的价值和收入。这一举措还为HC的教职员工、技术人员和学生创造了令人兴奋的机会，让他们参与到现实世界的项目中来，为教职员工提供了宝贵的专业发展机会，并为学生创造了就业和专业培训机会。此外，已经确定了具体的结果，以增加荷兰学院的EDI能力，确保在组建研究团队以改善项目时，多样性和包容性是首要考虑的。

Summary of ProposalSupporting the recovery of small- and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) in Prince Edward Island's biotechnology, food processing and clean tech sectors through collaborative research and development (R&D) is of tremendous importance to the Island economy. These industries were not immune to the effects of Covid-19 and faced challenges with staffing, supply chains and shifted from pursuing innovation, to staying afloat. This initiative identifies key areas of strategic expertise at Holland College (HC) that will support short- and medium-term innovative R&D projects with industry partners resulting in immediate outcomes and benefits to those partnering companies and organizations, facilitating an emergence from this stagnant growth period. Specifically, 12 new industry driven projects have been identified and fully scoped, with a focus on creating short term paybacks for those industry partners such as generating new value from food waste products, advancing technologies to improve environmental outputs and decrease time to market, and improving processes to save costs and shift production capacity. New relationships will be developed, and existing relationships fortified over the next two years of this initiative. These bi-directional collaborations will result in new opportunities for company personnel reskilling and training, access to R&D expertise, developing new intellectual property and creating new value and revenues. This initiative also creates exciting opportunities for staff, faculty, technicians, and students at HC to participate in real-world projects, providing valuable professional development to faculty and staff and creating employment and specialized training opportunities for students. In addition, specific outcomes have been defined to increase the EDI capacity at Holland College, ensuring diversity and inclusion is top of mind when assembling research teams for the betterment of the projects.