Our ILOs might sometimes be biologists. We've had industrial liaison officers with biology backgrounds. It's not uncommon. They could be academics, in some cases. But they have to have good expertise in terms of their knowledge of the industry and working with industry.
Generally, it would work like this. Let's say an industry client or an individual has a problem or efficiency issues with his boat and he wants to look at designing a new bulbous bow for his operation. He will call up the industrial liaison officer, because he's aware of the centre, and he will say, “Listen, this is my problem. Do you know anybody who can help with this? Is there any funding available for this?” The ILO will go out there, take a look at the issue, and say, “Yes, we have an engineer at Memorial University who has great expertise in this area; let's go have a chat.” Then he will come back, call the academic researcher, and bring them together to sit down and talk about the issue. If there's a project there, the ILO will facilitate the development of that proposal by the academic lead. He will go out and talk to the NRC/IRAPs of the world and the provincial agencies and solicit funding support, get the project proposal in place, get the project up and running, manage it right through to make sure that all the milestones and all the deliverables are being met, make sure the accountability is there, which is an important consideration as well, and then do any follow-up work required.
So he is the catalyst for that. Without him, that work doesn't happen. And I would debate anyone on that. Some of it will happen, but largely it won't. The key reason is that industry is busy. They don't have time to run with this. In many cases, they don't know where to run with it.
In the academic community, their expertise is doing research, and that's their focus. For them, time spent liaising with industry and trying to drum up work is time away from research. That's time they largely don't have.
The catalyst role is essential, but don't forget the funding role as well. There aren't many other agencies out there that fund fisheries development. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans doesn't do it anymore, not on the development side.
I hope that gives you a bit of a clearer understanding.