Thank you, and through you, Madam Chair, Niagara College has a long-time program in photonics, which is how I got involved with the college. We found that our graduates would find most of their jobs in the defence industry because of the knowledge of sensors and the combination of mechanical, electronic and photonics. With the call to the country to do more on defence and dual use, we decided to pivot and serve these companies better, maybe with a more focused graduate.
We were able to turn this program around fairly quickly, in less than a year, to welcome these new students in the fall. It's being very well subscribed, I'm happy to say. This program will be very well connected with the research program at the Walker Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Centre to develop, with industry, new products that they can use in that supply chain for industry.
When I say at speed, it's because a lot of us are ready. We already have a bunch of innovation centres and research labs that do projects of all sorts of different durations, from a few weeks if it's tests, to maybe a year. We're not looking at generating years and years of articles or Ph.D.s.