Canada’s idea generators (our universities) are actively lobbying Canada’s cash generators (our industries) in search of the financial support needed to translate academic abstractions into practical tools. The payoff would be technology that can be put to profitable use.
The mining industry is no exception. At least four mining schools are attempting to establish research centres, known by the often-heard, catch-all term “centre of excellence.” Within those centres will be established what are known in academic circles as Chairs — positions of authority and prestige, occupied by widely respected, prominent researchers who are leaders in a particular field. Rock mechanics, automation and surface mining are some examples of subjects that might be covered. Some universities, however, are having more luck than others in finding leaders in the mining industry to accomplish these laudable goals.
The Canadian Centre for Automation and Robotics in Mining (CCARM), created at Ecole Polytechnique and McGill University in Montreal in June, 1988 is one of the lucky ones. According to Executive Director Andre Piche, CCARM has secured assurances from both the government and the industry that the centre will be financed. The respective ministers in the Quebec and federal governments have given their guarantees that they will each contribute $200,000 per year to the centre. That assurance was given with the proviso that the centre receive research contracts from industry of equal value. Two well known mining men, Jacques Nantel of Noranda and Eric Kossatz of Inco have committed their companies to the necessary research contracts with CCARM.
Their leadership should be enough, Piche says, to successfully launch CCARM. This news is important because three years after any centre of excellence is formed, it becomes eligible for grants from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to establish research Chairs.
The University of Calgary has not been as lucky as CCARM. It is actively lobbying industry leaders such as Syncrude Canada, whose president and CEO, Ralph Shepherd, who was chosen by the Alberta Chamber of Resources as “Resource Man of the Year” in 1987, to provide the leadership to launch a Centre of Excellence in Surface Mining in Calgary. Several other mining companies, which depend on open pit mining technology, stand to gain from such an endeavor. They too should stand up and be counted among the leaders of this industry and commit themselves to such a project.
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