Goal 9: Industry, innovation and infrastructure

With over 120 SDG 9-specific research projects, strategic global partnerships, and cutting-edge facilities, UM fosters sustainable development in energy, food security and climate resilience. Key highlights include the Churchill Marine Observatory, Alternative Village, and pioneering work in economic reconciliation. Each year, 45 new inventions and several spin-offs emerge from UM, underscoring its role as a driver of sustainable economic impact both locally and globally.

• Another measure of a university’s innovation is the creation of new companies, and UM had 7 spin offs in recent years, and every year about 45 new inventions are disclosed to UM’s Partnership, Knowledge Mobilization and Innovation Office.
• UM’s research income is $4,159,477; with $2,248,515 coming from partnerships in STEM fields, $1,355,426 from medical partnerships and $555,536 from partnerships in arts, humanities and the social sciences.
• UM has 5,209 employees of which 2,492 are academic staff and of those, 530 are in the STEM fields, 1,283 in medicine and 678 in arts, humanities and the social sciences.
• An independent economic impact report found that UM injects $7.4 billion into Manitoba’s economy and that every dollar invested in UM returns $4.10.
• UM invented canola, and today exports total $15.8 billion.

International business studies

Nineteen Asper MBA candidates travelled to the Republic of Mauritius, to learn first-hand the challenges and opportunities of international business. Their goal is to work with local partners to assist in its transition from a sugarcane producer to an increasingly diversified economy while bolstering its telecommunications, banking and ecotourism industries and its efforts to balance economic pursuits and ecological responsibility.

Business sustainability research

Bruno Dyck is the Norman Frohlich Professorship in Business Sustainability at UM and a global authority on a new approach to business called Social & Ecological Thought (SET) management. This new approach to business places people and planet ahead of maximizing profits. His research has been published in leading scholarly journals, including Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Review, and the Journal of Management Studies and he has been celebrated with international awards from the Francisco de Vitoria University and the International Humanistic Management Association.

The Centre for Earth Observation Science

The Centre for Earth Observation Science (CEOS) leads a collaborative network that addresses the pressing challenges of climate resilience and sustainable development. With extensive partnerships with governments and NGOs across the Arctic, UM is working with diverse stakeholders to ensure climate research translates into meaningful, community-driven solutions for climate adaptation in the region. Our research outcomes are being applied to influence policy and aid sustainable development globally.

Churchill Marine Observatory

CEOS just opened the Churchill Marine Observatory (CMO), a globally unique, highly innovative, multidisciplinary research facility that gives researchers access to marine and Arctic life like never before. A warming Arctic invites increased shipping and resource development, and this facility will help a global network of researchers understand how we can protect marine species and combat oil spills in the face of these changes. The novel data we will obtain from this laboratory will help inform global policy around shipping and resource development in this fragile ecosystem.

The Alternative Village

The Alternative Village is a unique and long-running experimental facility at UM that brings researchers from across disciplines together to create and test new resilient building materials for use in differing climates and extreme weather so that we can build safe, affordable housing for everyone. Likewise, the C.A.S.T. Lab, or Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology, is an interdisciplinary research laboratory that provides unique conditions for critical and creative experimentation with technologies relevant to the design, construction and performance of the built environment, such as using less concrete in buildings or creating structures quickly and safely in areas hit by natural disaster.

Researching a better way forward

UM students and faculty are designing new ways to bring healthier, accessible foods to remote First Nations and Inuit communities. Addressing food insecurity means we are tackling myriad health problems such as obesity, diabetes, anemia, and heart disease, and a biosystems engineering team is using innovative greenhouses to provide a sustainable solution for food production in northern communities. UM is also finding new ways to build homes in northern First Nations communities that can better withstand climate change.

Upgraded infrastructure

On our campus UM has upgraded its infrastructure, replacing over 2,800 fixtures to low-flow or other water conserving devices, installing new windows, removing asbestos and adopting a LEED Silver rating as the target certification for all new buildings. Thanks to improved investments in infrastructure, UM has one of the lowest Energy Use Intensities (EUI) among Canadian universities.

In response to challenges facing many local businesses during COVID-19 restrictions, the Asper School of Business created a new undergraduate course designed to give back to the Manitoba business community. The Applied Small Business Consulting course provides students an opportunity to actively work with small businesses to help find solutions to their current challenges.

Master of Finance student Temitope Osunrinde is developing solutions to provide small businesses in Africa with more opportunities to operate on a global scale.

UM’s Green Investment Fund supports innovative, grassroots ideas faculty and staff have to reduce our environmental footprint by updating our infrastructure, such as a creative way to recover 90 per cent of helium—the only non-renewable element—on our campus.

The “Better Together” event we host sees upwards of 100 students come together to develop entrepreneurial solutions for global and local challenges, creating new sustainable industry practices.

UM has many success stories, from student Leanne Kisil who attended a workshop on mushrooms outside of her regular classes and then had the idea of creating Solbrü, a company that creates non-alcoholic elixirs made of mushrooms and herbs, to Faculty of Science grad Chris Schmidt who founded Canada’s fastest growing company.

Economic Reconciliation, which is the process of making economic amends for historical injustices to First Nations, Inuit and Métis people by expanding equitable access to industry, is an important pillar of the work UM leads and UM is in the process of creating a new chair in economic reconciliation. UM’s community is building on our research strengths in water and food security and sovereignty, and partnering with Indigenous rightsholders to develop future trading pathways through the Hudson Bay to transform connectivity, strengthen regional and global supply chains, and secure economic prosperity for local Indigenous communities. To help ensure progress gets made, UM co-created the Canadian Reconciliation Barometer to provide transparent data to the community.

The Human-Computer Interaction Lab at UM is committed to exploring new and innovative research areas in human-computer interaction. To support policy-makers and inform public debate, the lab does cutting-edge work in a number of fields, including how learning software can best be developed to have the largest impact, how online communities can be shaped into more positive and inclusive spaces, what technologies are needed to support older adults and young children in using advanced technologies, and what considerations we need to have in designing Human-Artificial Intelligence interactions.

Building more equitable digital infrastructure is on our students’ radar too. UM students in the Master of Human Rights Program work to bridge the digital divide, and UM Law students lead campaigns for equity in digital document access within the justice system.

Alternative Reading Week allows students to engage in community-based volunteer experiences abroad, including trips to Belize and Ecuador where they engage in a hands-on project that meets community needs.