Academic User Program

The Resource for the Innovation of Engineered Materials Program

The Resource for the Innovation of Engineered Materials (RIEM) program, formerly known as the Academic User Access Facility, enables academics from across Canada to access CanmetMATERIALS facilities for hands-on research. This program is the culmination of the efforts of co-applicant researchers from ten Canadian universities and CanmetMATERIALS.

In 2007, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) awarded a Major Resources Support (MRS) program grant to Dr. Hani Henein, Director of the Advanced Materials and Processing Laboratory at the University of Alberta, which is the university head of the RIEM program. This grant, which runs until March 2013, follows a similar grant awarded in 2003 to David S. Wilkinson, formerly of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and currently Dean, Faculty of Engineering, McMaster University, and to eight co-applicant Canadian university researchers.

Since the RIEM program’s inception in 2003, CanmetMATERIALS, in conjunction with the Canadian university community, has delivered more than 60 research projects within the framework of its four research programs.

The unique RIEM program, which enjoys one of only two NSERC-supported access grants involving federal facilities, has opened up opportunities to enhance cooperation with Canadian universities in materials research.

Under the program, university researchers work closely with CanmetMATERIALS researchers and technologists to access the laboratory’s unique pilot-scale facilities for producing and studying a variety of structural materials, especially for research using hot and molten metals, which entail serious safety requirements that academic facilities are not well-suited to handle. The RIEM program also assists new faculty in establishing themselves and helps foster the training of graduate students and other highly qualified personnel through exposure to the CanmetMATERIALS research environment. Researchers from a variety of disciplines can work together to develop new and innovative approaches to materials research.

The NSERC MRS program, which awarded RIEM its grant, stipulates that professors from all Canadian universities should be eligible to apply for access to designated CANMET facility areas. It also specifies that funding is awarded for publishable university research only and that all projects may be subject to user fees payable by the applicant.

Successful applicants are typically awarded a few hundred hours of access to CanmetMATERIALS facilities to be used over a period of one to two years. CanmetMATERIALS also partially funds the travel costs of students associated with the RIEM program. Students may visit the laboratory to observe experiments conducted by staff or to conduct supervised experiments using CanmetMATERIALS equipment and facilities.

The following CanmetMATERIALS facilities can be accessed through the RIEM program:

  • Canada’s only pilot-scale casting laboratory;
  • a pilot-scale rolling mill;
  • metal-forming and simulation facilities;
  • integrated computational materials engineering facilities;
  • advanced materials production facilities;
  • induction and arc welding facilities;
  • mechanical and corrosion properties evaluation facilities; and
  • microstructural characterization facilities.

RIEM-program applications fall under four categories: Lightweight Metals, Steel, Emerging Materials and Composites, and Materials for Energy.  To learn more or to apply, contact Vasanthy Sivasundaram, RIEM Manager at CanmetMATERIALS.