Celebrating 20 years of Applied Research and Innovation Services at SAIT

The first 20 years

Applied research at SAIT builds solutions to real-life challenges. SAIT’s researchers collaborate with industry professionals and leading experts, as well as SAIT faculty and student researchers.

2000 – 2015: Gold, green and cow print

One project really put us on the global map: an initiative to improve the bobsleds used by Olympic athletes.

That project started our Sports and Wellness Engineering Technology group — one of the earliest iterations of the Centre for Innovation and Research in Advanced Manufacturing and Materials (CIRAMM), which today is dedicated to advancing innovation in digital manufacturing and advanced materials.

The early stages of our Green Building Technology Access Centre (GBTAC) were also set in motion in 2008, when research around net-zero homes began.

The centre, first known as Green Building Technologies, changed its name when it was granted Technology Access Centre funding and status by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). Among its noteworthy early projects are the 2011 Net Zero Energy Home Award-winning Discovery 4 and the 2014 Emerald Award-winning Discovery 5 — both net-zero homes.

Today, GBTAC partners with industry to identify and develop environmentally friendly technologies and processes to change how we build and train skilled labour.

Meanwhile, in 2011, while some of our researchers were going for green or gold, others were thinking in cow print.

ARIS was approached by the Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency, in conjunction with the Picture Butte Cooperative, to develop a better electronic identification tag for livestock. This project aimed to make an radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag that could be detected through rain or snow, in alleys or barns and other places where cattle roam.

That was the beginning of the RFID Applications Development Research Centre, known as the “RADLab.” The group’s work expanded from animal tracking and RFID tags to include research projects to develop specific software and hardware — work that is still done today by our Independent Researchers group.

2015 – present: The sky’s the limit — just ask our drones

Our researchers are busy bees (did we mention ARIS supported an urban beehive project?), so we’ve only captured a fraction of ARIS’s earliest work.

By 2015, an ARIS research centre called Environmental Technologies  was juggling research on water reclamation, tailings pond management and other improvements to conventional energy projects, while also beginning to expand into unconventional energies. Over time, work has been adopted by other parts of the ARIS Hub, and in 2021 much fell to the new Centre for Energy Research and Clean Unconventional Technology Solutions (CERCUTS) — which today focuses on exploring green energy initiatives and sustaining conventional energy resources.

See inside CERCUTS' state-of-the-art labs

In 2016, the ARIS Hub established the Centre for Innovation and Research in Unmanned Systems (CIRUS). Their mission? To expand the role of remotely piloted systems in data acquisition and management, payload lift and delivery systems, search and rescue and various other projects across sectors and regulatory environments.

Basically: they set their sights sky-high.

Meanwhile, ARIS’s oldest centres continued to make a name for themselves. GBTAC, for example, helped build , and the Sports and Wellness Engineering Technology group had officially become CIRAMM and supported the creation of a game-changing sensor that could help reduce oilsands emissions.

The next 20 years

Jamie McInnis, Director, Applied Research and Innovation Services, shares what’s ahead for ARIS Hub.

Fundamentally, we will continue to embrace what we always have: opportunities for meaningful, hands-on research propelled by industry and community challenges.

“Everything we do is driven by industry need. It’s always come from industry, somebody’s question that's keeping them up at night,” McInnis explains. “‘If only I could do this, my company, community or non-profit would be so much better.’ Then we at ARIS think, ‘OK, how do we fix that?’”

Moving forward, ARIS is looking to expand its scope, looking for opportunities to participate in international projects, continuously expanding our impact from local and provincial projects to finding solutions to global research questions.

ARIS will continue to work in collaboration with other post-secondary institutions.

McInnis says, “We’ve been building collaborations with other polytechnics. In September 2023, we established the first technical symposium where where regional polytechnics may participate and showcase their contributions to the Alberta economy and science. In another unique collaboration SAIT, NAIT and Red Deer Polytechnic are founding partners of P2INACLE: an interprovincial collaboration of polytechnics from Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta. Our goal is not just to share expertise, but to know what other groups are working on. Then, if someone comes to us with a question outside of our expertise, we can say, ‘We don’t know, but we know who does.’”

2025 – beyond: Stepping towards global impact

We’re already beginning the kind of global work McInnis describes, helping find solutions to questions with wide applications.

Partnership with NATO Defence innovation accelerator for the North Atlantic

NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) network is working to connect innovators with the resources needed to develop dual-use technologies with a wide variety of security and civilian applications.

The ARIS Hub is joining the network to lend its expertise in materials science, advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, robotics and automation through CIRAMM. As one of two test centres in Alberta and 13 in Canada, CIRAMM will provide services to support start-ups and entrepreneurs as they demonstrate and validate emerging security solutions. Access to SAIT’s cutting-edge facilities and advice from our team of research experts will be available to innovators associated with DIANA’s more than 200 affiliated sites and centres.

Wildfire recovery on Canada’s landscapes

SAIT and NAIT have teamed up to support the Government of Alberta as our wildfire seasons become more extensive. We're looking at how to mitigate and recover from wildfires and how to plant trees post-wildfires rather than the land sitting deforested — which can lead to other kinds of problems, like landslides.

We’re also researching how our drones can support wildfire response — including providing vital delivery services, monitoring in low-visibility conditions and providing real-time updates to on-ground responders.

Ongoing projects — to name a few

ARIS is currently working with Indigenous communities in Alberta on several projects. One ongoing research area includes using remotely piloted aircraft systems to identify hazards in the nearby forests and ensure community members and infrastructure are protected in event of a wildfire, while the ARIS Battery Storage project seeks to address issues related to renewable power intermittency, energy grid stabilization and climate resiliency.

With ARIS, there’s always more to come. Stay tuned for our next major project!