The TEPS training program is divided into 3 Cross-Cutting Program Elements and 3 Integrated Research Themes.
The program elements consist of:
1. Summer Skills Series (S3) and Monthly Seminars provides a highly interactive and interdisciplinary learning environment, and enhances professional skills, collaboration, and networking opportunities. TEPS organizes Monthly Seminars and yearly Summer Skills Series workshops. The Seminars, available online, feature a co-applicant or collaborator as the main speaker, followed by a discussion where the research teams and industrial partners review their projects, successes and challenges. The S3 consist of three days of in-person meetings, skills seminars, and 3 intensive short graduate courses in each Research Theme and a public night. These sessions allow researchers and trainees to extend their knowledge of the latest developments in instrumentation technologies, data analysis and computational methodologies, through cutting-edge research talks by invited speakers from academia and industry. It also includes a professional development day, a public outreach event, and a daylong conference where trainees present to a multidisciplinary audience.
2. The Internships-in-Industry (I-in-I) program enables students to spend a minimum of 4 months with an industry collaborator learning how their scientific skills can be applied to the task of instrument development and how those tools, in turn, allow for better science. Industry collaborators from COM DEV, ABB Bomem and MDA include leaders in all three research themes, thereby providing a wide range of potential industrial concentrations. By forging partnerships with Canadian industry we ensure that the program is responsive to their needs. Our industry placements are leveraging further with Mitacs Accelerate and Globalink funding. Moreover, our PhD graduates and PDFs are encouraged to apply for Mitacs Elevate funding to facilitate their transition into the work force. To ensure that the program is executed smoothly, we have industrial partners on the Program Committee (PC) that oversee this program element and also have a seat on the advisory committee for the TEPS program.
3. The Cross-Disciplinary International Internship (X-I2) program encourages student mobility by providing for the trainees to spend a minimum of 1 month in internationally recognized research laboratories of our collaborators, cross-training on a second research theme. The most productive research activities of TEPS are anticipating to be those that cross the boundaries between the three research themes. As such, true innovation occurs when an idea from one area is applied or transferred to one of the other two research themes. International collaborators, such as Traub, Pierrehumbert, and Kaltenegger, are world leaders in their fields, and represent precisely the resource our trainees need to truly accelerate their progress. This program will eventually be expanding to a 2-way exchange in which foreign researchers spend time in the laboratories of TEPS Co-Applicants via the Mitacs Globalink program.
