Industry & Other Non-Government Funding

Collaboration with industry and community partners is an integral component of Ryerson’s research and innovation strategy. In 2016-17, Ryerson received $10.7 million from industry, foundations and not-for-profit organizations to support Ryerson research through grants, matched funding programs and research contracts to help develop innovative products, build capacity in communities here and abroad, and to further scientific, educational, cultural or charitable initiatives.

Enza Gucciardi (Nutrition) was awarded a grant from the Lawson Foundation to develop, implement and evaluate a food insecurity screening program that supports socio-economically disadvantaged families of children with diabetes, who often find themselves financially challenged by the competing expense of medications versus pressing costs such as housing. Undertaken with Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, the food insecurity screening research will be at the apex of personalized diabetes management programs that are tailored to support both a diabetic child’s well-being as well as a family’s lived reality.

Ebrahim Bagheri (Electrical and Computer Engineering) was named Industrial Research Chair (IRC) in Social Media Analytics, through support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Warranty Life Inc. As the user data generated on social networks is vast, it is also expensive and time consuming to collect, meaning businesses have continued to rely on consumer surveys to evaluate products and services. Bagheri’s work will build next-generation computational models to gather and analyze this data, then evaluate and categorize it into actionable, personalized information – unlocking better ways for industry to meet consumer needs.