Shortage of highly trained personnel

Canada's high-tech industries are starved for highly trained personnel.

So severe is the expertise shortage, says one leader in the telecommunications industry, it is impinging the development of what is one of Canada's biggest and fastest-growing sectors. Gedas Sakus, a recently retired senior executive of Nortel Networks (formerly Northern Telecom) put it bluntly in a speech in early 1998. "Unfortunately, the supply of qualified graduates in the key information technology disciplines is not keeping up with demand. For companies in the high-tech industry, the shortage of skilled (technology) professionals is beginning to affect future competitiveness and decisions on where to expand."

The Canadian Institute for Telecommunications Research (CITR) helps alleviate the shortage of highly trained people in the information and communications technology industries. But that's not all. CITR strives to equip post-graduate researchers with expertise targeted to the most important R&D challenges just arising at the top of industry's agenda.

"Our people not only gain advanced skills," says CITR President Birendra Prasada, "but the right expertise to meet industry's top emerging priorities. They have the right skills at the right time." Agrees Peter Takats, System Manager of Multimedia Architectures at Spar Aerospace in Montreal, "Students come out of CITR as experts in the key areas companies are interested in pursuing."

CITR assembles national teams of university researchers to develop major technologies that will be crucial to Canada's high-tech companies in the near future. About 60 leading professors are working with 270 postgraduate students and research associates at 17 universities across Canada.

When Ashraf Mahmoud worked with a CITR team as a Ph.D. student at Ottawa's Carleton University, their research on advanced radio systems was ahead of its time. The team designed radio technology that will permit people with wireless phones, laptop computers, or other wireless terminals to engage in audio/video calls, exchange data files, or go on the Internet-all over the airwaves. But there is an even bigger market. Radio technology could be used to deliver advanced communications services to homes and offices, in competition with traditional wire and cable systems.

Mahmoud went to Nortel Networks in mid-1997.

"When I was at CITR, this stuff was purely research," he says. "Now people are implementing it as products. This area of technology is hot."

Rocco Di Girolamo moved from CITR research at Concordia University to Spar Aerospace in Montreal a year ago. At CITR, he was part of a research network exploring how satellites can take on a whole new role in telecommunications, providing sophisticated communications services directly to homes and offices.

"This is the area of R&D in satellites today," says Mr. Di Girolamo. "The work I am part of at Spar fits almost exactly with what we pursued at CITR. There won't be any product out for two or three years, but this is definitely the direction industry is headed."

CITR tackles major, sustained research projects just in advance of when Canadian industry will require the resulting technologies, insights, and research expertise. Focusing on the right technologies at the right time is critical.

Industry steers CITR in the appropriate research directions. The committees that guide CITR's six major research projects are composed mostly of industry representatives. Industry funds CITR's endeavours, together with the federal Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) Program.

"Industry brings a view of its strategic needs and the timeliness of research directions," says Dr. Prasada. "University researchers have a grasp of the frontiers of technology, of what is technologically possible. CITR unites the two. It is a powerful combination."

The elements of the CITR experience also are a powerful combination. Besides gaining leading-edge expertise, CITR students learn teamwork. A CITR project is conducted by a team of researchers at several Canadian universities.

"Most university researchers are concerned only about their own piece of research," says Johnny Wong, a professor at the University of Waterloo and a member of CITR's research team evolving Internet technology. "But as part of a team, a student must design his piece to fit with all the other components."

The teamwork goes beyond abstract research. A CITR research project typically culminates with the building of a demonstration system or prototype.

"The students work on major future applications," says Spar's Takats. "That's terrific preparation for industry."

David Kabal worked on an intriguing prototype while at CITR and a student at McGill University. He was part of a team developing a radically new type of technology for big telecommunications switches. The team is pioneering the use of light pulses instead of electronic signaling to move massive volumes of communications "traffic" within a switch. Light-based or photonic technology has the potential to create fast, compact "super-switches" with capacities hundreds of times greater than today's systems. Mr. Kabal was the CITR team's "packaging" expert. He worked out the complexities of assembling multitudes of minute high-tech pieces, such as tiny lasers, lenses and microcircuitry, into compact but powerful hardware components.

"At CITR, I got to design and build entire subsystems," Mr. Kabal says. "I was given the freedom to explore design options and be part of major design decisions. I got full designs finished, dealt with suppliers to get the components fabricated, and worked on a task force to integrate all the pieces into the larger system."

Mr. Kabal moved to Nortel Networks last year, to work on super-switch technology.

"CITR gave me a very good head start," he says. "The directions that (switching) systems will move in future requires the kinds of technology CITR is developing."

CITR's work and its researchers' expertise are tailored to the particular emerging needs of Canada's high-tech companies. CITR alumni tend to remain in Canada, some going into academe, the bulk into industry R&D departments. Of 269 researchers who finished at CITR between 1994 and 1998, more than 70 percent applied their leading-edge expertise within the Canadian R&D realm.

CITR is one of 14 research networks funded under the Networks of Centres of Excellence program. The three federal granting councils - the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Medical Research Council (MRC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) - oversee and support the NCE initiative jointly with Industry Canada. In 1997-1998, CITR received $2.6 million from the NCE program.