Optimizing Power Skills in Interdisciplinary, Diverse & Innovative Academic Networks (OPSIDIAN)

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For Canada to secure its leadership in a highly competitive knowledge-based global economy, it must take full advantage of its productive and innovative potential. Fundamental skills in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, although necessary, are no longer sufficient for technological innovation and productivity growth. Power skills, such as diversity- and interdisciplinary-driven communication, teamwork and leadership, have now become inescapable complementary competencies. Yet, both the industrial and academic research communities are ill-equipped to fully exploit the potential of interdisciplinary and diverse teams. OPSIDIAN is a stand-alone program, which places power skills acquisition at the core of the training. Trainees will put these skills into practice across five engineering fields (biomedical, civil, computer, industrial, mechanical) around which OPSIDIAN transversally articulates. The program will provide the knowledge and tools to train students to integrate interdisciplinarity and diversity in innovative science and engineering teams. Leveraging a constructivism-based approach, training will be integrated as an active contextualized process of knowledge co-construction, fully engaging students in their learning process. The highly transferable and evolvable power skills will grant trainees with a clear edge in their future job prospects, as those skills are actively sought by academia, industries and governments.To our knowledge, OPSIDIAN will offer a unique and innovative training model across Canada for engineering graduate students. It breeds a change of paradigm in the way students are trained to efficiently collaborate, interrelate and innovate within interdisciplinary and diverse science and engineering teams. Over time, OPSIDIAN's ambition is to transfer its training model to other Canadian Universities from coast-to-coast-to-coast.