Sudbury centre of excellence lobby gets cash influx from city, university.

The first shovelful of cash is being thrown towards ensuring a Sudbury-based mining research centre of excellence becomes reality.

Laurentian University and the City of Greater Sudbury are combining to contribute $250,000 to promote and brand the proposed Centre of Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI).

An announcement is expected in early December naming John Gammon, former assistant deputy minister of Northern Development and Mines as Laurentian's point man to bring CEMI to fruition in his new position as the school's new Director of Mining Initiatives.

Gammon, who retired last summer after a 17-year career in government, will be responsible for raising the profile of Laurentian's mining-related research as well as working with senior government officials for funding support.

An interim board of directors of top-level industry, government and academic officials will also be formed to drive the project forward.

Senior management at Inco and Falconbridge has already committed to the board, as has Cambrian College president Sylvia Barnard.

Armed with $200,000 from Laurentian and $50,000 from the city, Gammon says the money is earmarked to brand the university as a mining research hub along with various office and traveling expenses towards securing research dollars from government funding agencies.

Gammon estimates there's more than $20 million worth of industry money available for key research work into areas such as deep mining. The majority of that work could be done in Sudbury by the various research institutes at Laurentian.

"We need to ensure the federal and provincial ministers will come to the table to match industry funding," says Gammon. "They need to understand why this is important and how it fits their agenda of commercialization and innovation."

Laurentian president Judith Woodsworth says their initial contribution represents the first step towards eventually establishing an innovation park.

She says by assembling a board of influential industry types, they hope to loosen the purse strings of the provincial and federal governments into equally sharing costs with Laurentian to fund the $30-million project.

Gammon says much of that money would be primarily for research work to give industry an immediate pay-off for their investment. A building would likely come later.

A business plan released in May by Ontario's Mineral Industry Cluster Council indicates there is no Centre of Excellence for exploration and mining anywhere in Canada. The report says most of Canada's mine-related R&D is uncoordinated and is carried out by mining companies in-house.

The concept for CEMI would involve training and education in areas of exploration, deep mining research, mine engineering, telerobotics and environmental issues, as well as finding commercialization opportunities.

Both Gammon and Woodsworth expect to see a major government funding commitment within six months to get research work started and form a governance model by hiring a formal director and installing a permanent board.

Although Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland recently cut the ribbon on a new $17.3 million mining research institute, Gammon doesn't see any competition for research dollars.

He says the centre's activity will focus on metallurgical research and social science issues, not on deep mining and telerobotics.

Inco committed $13 million toward the capital cost of the glass and steel edifice at Memorial and will provide $1 million annually for the first seven years of operation.

That facility was part of the development agreement entered into with the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador in September 2002 covering the Voisey's Bay nickel-cobalt project in northern Labrador.

www.laurentian.ca

www.greatersudbury.ca

By IAN ROSS 

Northern Ontrario Business