Office of Commercialization and Industry Engagement

Mitacs ‑ Further Information


Eligibility 

  • Full-time undergraduate students, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows (PDFs) in any academic discipline offered at Dalhousie University (note: students and PDFs can be Canadian citizens, permanent residents or international students)
  • Companies eligible for this program must be incorporated as for profit and can be located in Canada or in any of our partner countries (view the list here at Mitacs.ca) 
  • Eligible not-for-profit organizations must either have their headquarters in Canada or have a Canadian branch if their headquarters are located internationally. 

Please check out Mitacs.ca for the most complete and up-to-date information about the Accelerate program.

Intellectual Property (IP) Considerations 

If you’re planning a Mitacs project at/with Dalhousie, you may want to explore some of these key considerations at the beginning of your planning process. 

If you’re a student or postdoc…

Do you intend to publish or use the IP you develop during your Mitacs project for other purposes (i.e. to fulfill the requirements of your thesis or to launch a startup)?

It’s important to consider that the company/not-for-profit you’re working with may have a vested interest in the IP generated during the Mitacs project. Keeping this in mind, you’ll want to consider how you’d like to use the results of your work and manage conversations around IP with the company accordingly. If you haven’t considered how you’ll use your work in the future, it’s beneficial to discuss this with your academic supervisor. They may want to ensure that the results of the Mitacs project are able to be published and/or used for future research purposes. 

If you’re an academic supervisor…

Do you plan on contributing your IP to the Mitacs project?

If yes, it’s important for you to be aware that Dalhousie’s standard Mitacs research agreement does not cover the IP of faculty members.  This doesn’t prevent you from contributing your background IP if you’re not concerned with maintaining ownership over it.  

If you’re a company/not-for-profit…

Do you have an interest in owning/protecting the intellectual property (IP) created during the Mitacs projects?

If yes, it’s important to note the IP provisions within Dalhousie’s standard research agreement for Mitacs projects [PDF 337 KB].  Though slight adjustments can be made, deviation from the standard agreement is not encouraged due to time and resource constraints of the Mitacs planning process. 


The Mitacs representative in Halifax is Gailene Vandenheuvel. If you have any questions, please contact her by email at gvandenheuval@mitacs.ca or by phone at (902) 221-4679