To SIRT. SirtNet is a sector-wide project that we're developing right now, partly because of that funding from NSERC for the technology access centre. What that funding did for us was to expand what we could do, and it changed our mandate.
We were an applied research centre funded as part of a traditional sort of university mentality, in terms of what was happening, but moving slightly over to the college side. This meant that we were funded to do applied research. We weren't funded to do professional development. We weren't funded to do a lot of the nuts and bolts of consulting and access to infrastructure and expertise on a short-term basis. The technology access centre funding two years ago now allows us to do that. That's what changed our mandate and got us involved in developing SirtNet, because it was more of an access to infrastructure and expertise.
In the work that we do, the students act as researchers. We are outward facing. For example, last year we worked with about 25 companies in terms of individual research projects, but also consulting on certain projects. We trained over 1,000 people in the different unions and guilds and other people in terms of work.
Through SirtNet, we've also been involved in helping to draw at least one company to the Ontario region, based on the fact that SirtNet exists right now in the pilot stage.