Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN)
McMaster recognizes that access to research platforms with specialized equipment and technical expertise is essential to advancing basic research and competing on the world’s research stage.
Across our campus — from department-based laboratories to suites of equipment housed within centres and institutes to state-of-the-art national research facilities — our platforms provide our researchers with the cutting-edge methods and tools required to impact their fields of research. They also enable our private sector, government and community partners to access some of the country’s top talent.
In a move to begin reshaping the research landscape in Southern Ontario, McMaster and Western have signed a strategic agreement to open doors for shared access to 13 leading research facilities at each institution.
The unique partnership is more than a logistical arrangement — it’s a vision for a more connected, collaborative, and resilient research ecosystem.
At its heart, the agreement is about unlocking potential and identifying efficiencies. By providing reciprocal access to designated facilities, researchers at both institutions are able to tap into a broader array of world-class infrastructure and to accelerate discovery and innovation across disciplines.
Increasingly, university researchers are developing mutually beneficial collaborations with industry partners. This gives Canadian businesses access to new ideas to help compete in global markets, while the University fulfills its mandate of transferring research results to society. On a more practical level, sponsored research brings in more funding, provides access to interesting high-value problems, provides valuable exposure to industrial challenges, and gives students the opportunity to gain relevant industrial training for future career opportunities.
McMaster Industry Liaison Office (MILO) facilitates working with industry by negotiating all industry-sponsored research agreements and all research contracts performed by the university, whether from government, industry or other sources. We also work with researchers and industry to ensure that appropriate legal agreements are in place to enable the exchange of cells, other biological or chemical materials (MTAs) and confidential information and data (NDAs/DTAs).
We assist researchers in maximizing their funding from industry by identifying and reviewing application to eligible industry matching grant programs, such as Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council’s (NSERC) Research Partnerships Programs, as well as funding through the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) collaborative programs. We also help researchers in applying for commercialization funding programs, such as NSERC’s Idea-to-Innovation Program.
The McMaster Health Forum is a member of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) globally, as well as SDSN Canada, and SDSN Australia, New Zealand and Pacific. Through SDSN, our efforts are focused on SDSN theme 5, ‘Health for All,’ and include bringing synthesized research evidence from Health Systems Evidence and Social Systems Evidence to network activities involving policymakers and other leaders, and identify gaps in synthesized research evidence and primary studies that SDSN researchers can address.
Social Systems Evidence
Through a partnership with the Monash Sustainable Development Institute, the McMaster Health Forum has developed and continues to expand Social Systems Evidence — the world’s most comprehensive, free access point for synthesized evidence about strengthening 20 government sectors and program areas. The home page of Social Systems Evidence includes a user-friendly visual representation of the 17 SDGs, that allows users to access pre-selected content on each individual SDGs by clicking on the respective SDG tile.
We are actively collaborating with the Monash Sustainable Development Institute and SDSN partners to promote Social Systems Evidence through numerous channels available through the network.
Dr. Altaf Arain, who’s now a professor in the School of Earth, Environment & Society and the Science Research Chair in Environmental Sustainability and Climate Change, was looking to test a potential solution to our climate crisis. In 2002, he launched the Turkey Point Environmental Observatory which has been collecting data every half hour ever since, making it an invaluable resource for hundreds of climate scientists around the world.
Seven years later, he founded the McMaster Centre for Climate – a centre he would lead for 15 years and build into a catalyst for interdisciplinary research, student engagement, science communication and community outreach.
Altaf met with politicians and government agencies, fielding interview requests from journalists and connecting with climate scientists, groups and organizations looking to collaborate or replicate what the centre was doing at their universities. He says the centre has become everything he had hoped for – fostering multidisciplinary research with local to international partnerships, championing science communication and inspiring the next generation of climate scientists.
Faculty associated with the centre have published more than 300 peer-reviewed journal articles, presented over 160 times at national and international scientific conferences, workshops and symposiums and secured more than $8.5 million in grants from Tri-Council agencies and the Global Water Futures Program.
At IEPI, we identify and address ethical challenges, ethics-related risks, and policy gaps that have the potential to undermine the impact of life-saving technologies and interventions in global health. We collaborate with the global health research community, partners, funders, and other stakeholders to navigate the ethical, social, and cultural challenges that arise from scientific and technological advancement — so that, ultimately, innovative health solutions reach those who need them most.
McMaster University partnership with AMREF-Kenya
The AMREF Health Africa formed a unique partnership with McMaster research institutions to help bolster its work in Kenya. AMREF is a non-governmental organization with 50 years of experience in development. The partnership with McMaster University and the Father Sean O’Sullivan Research Centre (also connected to McMaster) and a Canadian NGO, the Salama SHIELD Foundation, assists AMREF in evaluating the impacts of its programs, base planning decisions on research, and share the findings with other African NGOs.
IAU Higher Education and Research for Sustainable Development
McMaster University is a proud member of the International Association of Universities (IAU), a membership-led NGO spanning 130 countries.
Since 1993, the IAU has advocated for the key role that higher education plays in achieving sustainable development. IAU’s actions in support of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development provide a framework for universities to develop inter-institutional collaboration in pursuit of sustainable development. The aim is to assist higher education leaders wishing to embed sustainable development concepts and principles in strategic planning and academic and organizational work.
As part of its involvement in the organization, McMaster belongs to its Cluster on Higher Education and Research for Sustainable Development. Research collaborations with the Hamilton community
The McMaster Research Shop works with public, non-profit, and community organizations in Hamilton to provide plain-language answers to research questions relating to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. A collection of 30 of these community research reports is housed by McMaster University Libraries.
International Activity Compendium
McMaster University is actively engaged every year in hundreds of international collaborations and partnerships. These connections include research collaborations, faculty exchanges, capacity building initiatives, joint supervision of doctoral students, and student exchanges and mobility agreements.
McMaster logs close to 2,000 international partnerships in the International Activity Compendium, a searchable database that highlights the university’s research and scholarly activities with global involvement and impact. Many of these are research initiatives with NGOs all over the world.
Some examples include:
- Helping Babies Breathe in Remote Fishing Villages in Cambodia Researchers from the Faculty of Health Sciences (Pediatrics) worked with the NGO, The Lake Clinic-Cambodia, to implement a newborn training program for health care workers and provide birth kits.
- Early Childhood Education in Ethiopia The project had a primary goal of assessing the effectiveness of the SRI, a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization founded on concerns regarding the lack of appropriate early child education in the country. The goal of the program was to make universal high-quality preschool education the standard in the education system of Addis Ababa. The secondary goal was to validate the Early Development Instrument (EDI) in Ethiopia.
- Responses to Internally Displaced People in Ukraine The Russian annexation of Crimea, and the ongoing conflict with Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk puts Ukraine at eighth on the list of countries with the largest number of internally displaced people. This project explores how various governmental and non-governmental agencies in Ukraine provide assistance to internally displaced people and the ensuing challenges.
- Essential Medicines for Children with Cancer WHO has been establishing an essential medicines list for more than three decades. More recently, the list has undergone further refinement to focus on specific patient populations and disease states. Researchers from McMaster University have worked with WHO to provide input into the Essential Medicines List for children with cancer; and then worked in an advocacy role targeting NGOs and the pharmaceutical industry to make access to these medicines a reality.