IDEA Lab

As a leader in open and online education, Athabasca University is transforming the future of digital-first university research through its IDEA Lab.

What is IDEA Lab?

IDEA Lab is a cloud-based virtual research domain developed in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and RONIN. IDEA Lab is a highly collaborative venture between AU’s Research Office and the Cloud Research Architecture team in Information Technology (IT) Services.

IDEA Lab accelerates innovation, discovery, and creation by providing streamlined access to digital tools and collaborative consultation throughout the process of ideation, development, and mobilization of research.

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IDEA Academy

Connected to IDEA Lab is IDEA Academy, the lab's self-paced training program for research assistants. The academy builds competencies in cloud computing delivery (through AWS and RONIN), equity, diversity, and inclusion in research, research data management, and agile project management methodologies for research.

This training enables research assistants to support, advance, and contribute to projects developed and supervised by AU faculty researchers. We recruit up to 15 research assistants for each cohort. The opportunity is open to undergraduate or graduate learners with varying levels of digital literacies. The current call for applications will develop a pool of candidates that may also be considered for future opportunities.

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Why IDEA Lab?

By leveraging emerging cloud technologies, IDEA Lab offers AU researchers a highly scalable and exceptionally secure virtual research domain.

IDEA Lab participants benefit from specialized funding and support for experimentation and deployment of cloud-based tools for research, design, and innovation. They also benefit from collaborative research program planning with the support of members of AU’s Research Development Office.

As both a strategic and signature digital research asset—and in keeping with AU’s digital-first identity and status as a post-secondary institution with a research mandate—IDEA Lab uniquely enables AU researchers and students to innovate, discover, explore, and accelerate their work using existing and emerging tools, processes, and data in the cloud for maximum impact.

Through IDEA Lab, AU researchers are well positioned to advance and further lead in digital-by-design and technology-enabled research.

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Learn more about IDEA Lab

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Get involved

Interested Athabasca University researchers can apply to join IDEA Lab through 1 of 2 streams: Accelerate or Explore. The Accelerate stream is for large-scale research projects requiring up to 6 months, and up to $8,000, while the Explore stream is for small-scale research projects requiring less than 3 months, and less than $2,000. Click here to learn more about the 2 streams and application requirements.