Obviously this is bad news for McGill. There's a bit of prestige involved in having a network based at your university. If we're talking strictly about quality, I don't know if any should have been dropped. McGill professor of medicine Dr. Peter Macklem, scientific director of Inspiraplex, says the loss of NCE funding won't necessarily spell the end for his network. The committee added that Inspiraplex's training record was spotty.
Few trainees appear to have been hired by industry and employment in general seemed rather low.
Although the news was good for Prasada's network, it could have been better. Some networks will receive funding for seven years, but CITR will get only four more years of NCE support. The committee said that CITR should be attracting more industrial support. We try to focus on areas of strategic value for Canada's future we want to know what tomorrow's technologies are going to be. Companies sometimes just want to focus on making short-term gains.