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

通过合作研究和开发（R&D），支持爱德华王子岛生物技术、食品加工和清洁技术部门的中小型企业（SMEs）的复苏，对岛屿经济具有巨大的重要性。这些行业未能幸免于COVID-19的影响，并面临着员工和供应链的挑战，并从追求创新转向维持运营。该计划确定了荷兰学院（HC）的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的短期和中期创新研发项目，为那些合作公司和组织带来即时成果和利益，促进从这一停滞增长期中脱颖而出。具体而言，已确定12个新的行业驱动项目，并已全面确定范围，重点是为这些行业合作伙伴创造短期回报，例如从食物垃圾产品中产生新价值，推进技术以改善环境产出并缩短上市时间，以及改进流程以节省成本并转移产能。在今后两年的行动中，将发展新的关系，并加强现有的关系。这些双向合作将为公司人员的再培训和培训、获得研发专业知识、开发新的知识产权以及创造新的价值和收入带来新的机会。这一举措还创造了令人兴奋的机会，为工作人员，教师，技术人员和学生在HC参与现实世界的项目，提供宝贵的专业发展，教师和工作人员，并创造就业和专业培训机会，为学生。此外，已经确定了具体的成果，以提高荷兰学院的EDI能力，确保多样性和包容性是组装研究团队以改善项目时的首要考虑。

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.