Thank you very much for your question. It's a good one.
I touched on that briefly in my comments on applied research. For those who haven't spent a lot of time in the applied research area, I'll say that applied research is done in partnership with industry. It's not related to the discovery research. It's very much focused on a problem or an innovation that a business owner and industry are looking for. Polytechnics and colleges across Canada are the one of the only areas from which applied research can be delivered in Canada. It's also done in partnership or in conjunction with students who work very closely on those projects.
What's happening in that environment is that a company will come into a polytechnic or college that has applied research capabilities. It will work with researchers, who are our staff members with industry-level experience. They'll work on prototyping or developing a product that a company has—either an existing product that needs to be changed or one that needs to be modified using new technology. At the same time, we have students involved in that process. What you're getting is a company that's working in a public institution with available public funding and in conjunction with students and researchers. The other thing that's quite unique about applied research in our institutions is that intellectual property brought into that environment is retained by the company or the partner we're working with in that environment. That reduces the barriers to entry. That allows companies to enter, without risk, into that environment.
The other thing we've seen quite often is that the students who are involved in those projects end up having the skills and talent required for that company to move on and implement the technology they've just developed in our research facilities. It's an ability for them to access talent. It's an ability for us to develop talent, and it's an ability for us to help companies, especially companies that don't have the size for their own in-house expertise for research, to access facilities, equipment and researchers to do that.