What do you get when you combine the latest high-tech gear, an upscale university dorm and 70 keen students?

The answer the University of Waterloo is after is innovation. The Ontario school, known for producing grads that land jobs in tech powerhouses such as Google, Microsoft and hometown darling Research In Motion, has invested more than $800,000 to transform a small, 40-year-old residence into what it hopes will become a hot house for cutting-edge ideas.

The experiment, called VeloCity, is the brainchild of Sean Van Koughnett, a staff member who thought of the concept while attending a telecom conference last year. His idea: hand-pick a group of motivated upper-year students from a range of disciplines who have aspirations of starting their own business or developing an idea using mobile or web technology. Give them the newest gadgets to play with, space to meet and trade ideas and access to industry mentors and investors. Students will be helped to form small working groups and those groups will have an end-of-term opportunity to present their ideas to members of industry.

"It's really the idea-germination process that we

are trying to get going here," Mr. Van Koughnett says. "We are trying to form a community of students, trying to inspire them to be entrepreneurial, to be innovative, to take risks. We are also trying to focus them, to get them working on an idea that they can present to someone who might want to hire them, acquire that idea, or help then develop it."

The model is unique to Canada although some U.S. schools have dorms dedicated to business or technology development. VeloCity, already dubbed the "dormcubator" by a tech magazine, also has attracted industry sponsors. Its residents range from second-year to masters students who are expected to do their brainstorming in addition to their regular courses, although they may also stay in the residence during

co-op work terms. The first crop of students moved

in this September, just about the same time as the club chairs, iPhones and a 65-inch LCD TV.

Jeff Verkoeyen, a third-year computer science student just back from a summer at Google, says he moved back onto campus because of the special dorm and the chance it offers to meet people and maybe find financial backing. Kevin Shahbazi, a second-year engineer studying nanotechnology, says he is looking forward to hanging out with students who have similar interests, after spending a year in a residences where most came home and shut their doors. "This is a great way to be involved," he says.