The decision has been made official this week that TRLabs will be closing the NEWT lab, effective Dec. 1, 2008. This is an unfortunate decision to made on the eve of Alberta’s Innovation Voucher program and at a time when it is more important than ever to diversify the Alberta economy.
As mentioned below, the test and validation functions of NEWT will be integrated into TRLabs. What form that will take will depend a lot on the industry need in the next few weeks. If you have a project waiting in the wings, now’s the time to let us know.
The official letter from our CEO is below:
It is with regret that I inform NEWT and TRLabs industry members that NEWT will cease to operate as a division of TRLabs, effective December 1, 2008. This was a tough decision made by the TRLabs Board of Directors considering a number of factors – primary among them a challenging industry revenue forecast further hampered by less than ideal market conditions.
This decision has three immediate implications:
1) The NEWT function will be integrated into TRLabs. Development, testing, and validation now forms part of the TRLabs mandate and service offering. TRLabs will be exploring opportunities to take what it has learned from NEWT and apply it to potential testing and validation services across ICT, and distributed across TRLabs;
2) The NEWT brand will cease to exist;
3) Duane Sniezek will remain the primary contact point for NEWT and TRLabs’ ongoing exploration of testing and validation activities and business development during a transitional period to come.NEWT was founded in 2002 as a representation of a simple idea – that the gap between basic research and the marketplace in Canada is an enduring one, and NEWT could effectively step into that gap with a threefold value proposition to industry: lower development costs; assurance of interoperable products; and acceleration of time to market for winning products. For six years NEWT had a good run – a first of its kind in Canada – and the first open access wireless development centre in the world. External reviews conducted by our government partners were positive. Industry lab use days exceeded 1000, and the number of projects completed with industry surpassed 90. There are numerous success stories.
TRLabs’ belief in and commitment to the provision of product development, testing, and validation services to industry remains steadfast. For the last several years TRLabs has re-positioned its mandate, its research program, and other operational features in response to evolving industry interest, funding conditions, and marketplace conditions. In this context, NEWT has effectively provided a stepping stone toward a more encompassing TRLabs mandate that today includes development and commercialization activities – a full R&D service offering to industry that better aligns with industry need while maintaining academic and government engagement. TRLabs’ broader mandate also creates a mutually beneficial and productive inter-relationship between applied research and commercialization-focused activities.
TRLabs stands at the threshold of an era of new possibilities, in part enabled by NEWT’s very successful track record. TRLabs is proud of NEWT’s accomplishments, and will move forward with NEWT’s spirit no longer outside TRLabs’ core brand and mandate – but part of it.
If you have a product development, testing or validation need or idea, we would like to hear from you.
Regards .. Roger
Tags: alberta innovation voucher, NEWT, TRlabs
