Seneca receives a total of $2.3 million from federal government to expand open source research

Toronto, June 3, 2010 --- Seneca will receive a total of $2.3 million in federal funding over five years for open source technology research as part of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s College and Community Innovation Program (CCI).

The Honourable Gary Goodyear, Minister of State (Science and Technology) made the announcement as part of $15 million in funding for 12 new projects where colleges work with their communities and local businesses to get new innovations from the campus into the marketplace.

“Our government supports innovation because it creates jobs, improves the quality of life of Canadians and strengthens the economy,” said Minister Goodyear. “We are supporting this project at Seneca College to strengthen the competitiveness of small and medium-sized businesses, and enable young Canadians to prepare for the jobs of tomorrow.”

With this grant, Seneca intends to scale and grow the research capacity of Seneca's Centre for Development of Open Technology (CDOT) to meet the ever-increasing needs of current and prospective partners. Seneca has become a world leader in academic involvement in the teaching and researching of open source software development. Working with such partners as Mozilla, IBM, and Red Hat, Seneca has pioneered a new method of student involvement in real-world open source software products.

Seneca intends to leverage open source technology to give small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) a competitive edge through a number of projects with a variety of partners. The research focus includes:

• expanding internet browser capabilities (e.g. - more accessible viewing of 3D content)
• creating better management tools to enhance enterprise use of open source.
• exploring open source processes that will help open source developers to be more productive.
• helping partner SMEs with open source product development.

"This funding is an important acknowledgement of the valuable, innovative research taking place at Seneca,” says Seneca College President David Agnew. “Building on a reputation of excellence in the open source community, this will help create graduates who have learned not only through hands-on experience, but through applied research that is changing the way we do business.”

The CCI Program is a joint initiative of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research. NSERC is a federal agency whose vision is to help make Canada a country of discoverers and innovators for the benefit of all Canadians.

More people choose Seneca than any other college in Canada. With 11 campuses across the Greater Toronto Area, Seneca provides internationally and nationally recognized education, training, and academic pathways key to graduate career success in the global economy. Every Seneca diploma, certificate and degree program is developed to a high academic standard, in consultation with industry, integrated with information technology, combined with technical and transferable skills, and reinforced by opportunities for ongoing education and re-training.

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Seneca College Media Relations
416-491-5050 ext. 7018