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Drive Canadian Tech Innovation with CENGN 

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CENGN Living Labs

Validate your technical solution in a real-world environment. 

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Prepare your smart agriculture solution for market entry and adoption

Smart Agriculture Living Lab

Submit Your Expression of Interest for Funding and Living Lab Access

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Logo UBC Farm

Smart Agriculture Living Lab: Test and Validate Your Smart Solution

Located on the University of British Columbia (UBC)’s Vancouver campus, the UBC Smart Farm offers a unique living lab for smart agriculture innovation. Their certified organic research facility provides 5 hectares of ideal testing space for agricultural tech solutions.

As part of UBC’s Centre for Sustainable Food Systems, the Smart Agriculture Living Lab combines academic research with practical growing operations, providing a valuable opportunity for your organization to collect detailed data and validate your agricultural technology in real-world environments.

What’s Offered at the Smart Agriculture Living Lab

The Smart Agriculture Living Lab allows your organization to test and develop your agricultural technology solution on small-scale, research-focused organic farm plots.The lab combines real-world farming environments featuring seasonal crops like strawberries, blueberries, and apples with cutting-edge connectivity infrastructure, including LTE and 5G networks across multiple frequency bands.


You’ll gain access to enterprise-grade hardware such as SIM cards, 5G modules, and specialized routers, plus Class C airspace for aerial testing capabilities.The Smart Agriculture Living Lab provides physical infrastructure and expert agricultural research services, creating an ideal ecosystem where technology meets sustainable farming practices to support your agtech solution.



*All expressions of interest are welcome. Please let us know how your company can benefit from the Living Lab.

Submit Your Expression of Interest

Potential Project Types at the Smart Agriculture Living Lab

The Smart Agriculture Living Lab supports numerous agriculture innovations, from ground-based robotics to aerial monitoring systems. Startups can validate autonomous solutions for planting, weed management, pest detection, and harvesting across multiple crops, while testing precision cultivation and organic treatment applications in real field conditions.


The Smart Agriculture Living Lab facility also enables comprehensive drone technology validation, including crop health monitoring, disease detection, precision irrigation systems, yield prediction, and infrastructure assessment capabilities.

With integrated data collection opportunities spanning soil sensors, weather monitoring, and farm management software platforms, the Smart Agriculture Living Lab provides the perfect environment to develop and refine multi-platform agricultural systems that combine robotics, aerial surveillance, and data analytics into cohesive agtech solutions.


*All expressions of interest are welcome. Please let us know how your company can leverage the Living Lab.


Smart Farming

Submit Your Expression of Interest

Program Guidelines

Learn more about applying for a project and our applicant acceptance criteria.

View the Program Guidelines

INNOVATION AT WORK

Carousel Entreprises
GECO

GECO

Leveraging all available data on and above farm fields into agronomic models so farmers can nip weed problems in the bud.

Tree Track

Tree Track

TreeTrack uses advanced technology and real-time data to accelerate ecosystem regeneration and improve reforestation success rates.

Get the Funding You Need for Your Project

The CENGN Living Lab Initiative provides all projects with funding.

Backed by Innovation, Science, and Economic Development (ISED) Canada’s $45 million investment, Canadian startups and scaleups, and CENGN Living Lab projects receive non-dilutive funding support.
 

Innovation Projects

 

Ensure market readiness and scalability. Test your solution for bottlenecks or performance issues in preparation for your market goals or get third-party evidence of your solution’s performance to impress potential customers, investors, or other stakeholders.

 

Adoption Projects

 

Have a prospect that’s interested in your solution? Work with a potential customer to validate your solution against their specific requirements in a Living Lab environment.

 

Learn More about CENGN’s Living Lab Initiative

Get Expert IP Guidance for Your Project  

Need IP Support for Your Project?  

Through CENGN’s partnership with New Ventures BC and Innovate BC, startups and scaleups running a CENGN project can access expert IP education and mentorship services. 

You’ll get help choosing the right protection strategy for your technology, whether that means patents, trade secrets, trademarks, careful use of open source, or a combination that fits your business goals.  

Reach out to [email protected] with any questions.  

Take on a Specialized CENGN Intern

Need Extra Support for Your Project?

Accelerate your project by accessing specialized talent through the CENGN Living Lab Internship Program.

 

Whether you need support before, during, or after your organization’s living lab project, CENGN’s internship program connects you with the critical technology and/or business skills to stay competitive.

 

Need help? CENGN can direct you to suitable funding agencies that can subsidize your internship costs. CENGN can also support you, from paperwork to student matching.

Learn More about Living Lab Internships

Does your company qualify for a CENGN Project?

 

✅ Based in Canada, with fewer than 500 employees

✅ Technology level must be TRL 4 and above

Submit Your Expression of Interest

About the Living Lab Initiative and CENGN

Currently supported by the Canadian Government’s Strategic Response Fund (SRF), Canada’s Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks (CENGN) helps startups and scaleups bring their solutions to market. CENGN provides the resources and technical expertise to test and validate their innovative solutions while developing tech talent through its internship programs.

 

Since 2014, CENGN’s programs have created nearly 12,000 Canadian jobs, contributed $1.15 billion to Canada’s GDP, supported over 300 internships with a 97% employment rate, and completed over 230 commercialization projects to build Canada’s position and expertise in the global technology landscape.

Learn More About the Program

About the Smart Agriculture Living Lab

Learn More

Contact

Do you have a question about this Living Lab or the CENGN Living Lab Initiative?

CENGN’s Business Development Team oversees the Living Labs and supports innovative organizations in testing, validating, and scaling their technology solutions.

For questions about partnership opportunities or program applications, please contact the Business Development Team at [email protected].

Smart Agriculture Living Lab

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Prepare your smart agriculture solution for market entry and adoption with the Smart Agriculture Living Lab
Submit Your Expression of Interest Back to Living Labs

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