A question regarding the work experience

[thechosenone]

Dear all,
I am thinking to apply for Canada immigration under the 'Skilled worker' category, however I have following question

1. Will they consider my Graduate research assistant experience in Drug design and discovery as work experience?

Here is my information: I was a graduate student and graduate research assistant at US based pharmacy school (one of the top 10 pharmacy schools). It's a state funded university. I had to work there as a research assistant and was paid by the university. It was drug design and discovery project for the treatment of cancer. This project was in a research lab which belongs to that university and the project was funded by National institute of Health (NIH), USA. It's a government funding agency in USA. But my tax documents used to say that my employer is the university.

I was on a student visa (F1) all that time.

The project would have counted for my graduate degree and I have completed MS in pharmaceutical sciences.

I have work experience of 3 years in that lab. Will this experience be counted as my work experience for the Canada immigration application under the skilled worker category?

I would really appreciate if anybody can give some input on this matter. I would like to make sure before I apply as I fear of losing the application money ($550) which is a lot for me at this moment.
Thanks guys and am looking forward for your replies.
The chosen one

[nano24482]

When you are on student visa in US you are allowed to work for 20 hrs per week on campus which is part time work.
A full time work consists of 40 hrs.

I assume you must be getting some sort of scholarship/TA as you were doing project(my bf too is on a research based MS in Canada).

One more thing you need to know is what exactly the university is paying you for. It can pay you for teaching assistant or your research work and for  how much hours they are paying you. Otherwise all these things will be included in your studies and not work experience. Based on this you can calculate your total work experience(eg if you are paid for 10 hrs per week than your work ex is not even 1 year)

I hope you got my point.

Best of luck.