Canada Foundation for Innovation unleashing research power of universities with $779 million in project awards

The Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) has administered the single largest injection of funding into university research in history with the awarding of $779 million to more than 280 projects. The latest announcement doubles the amount of funding the CFI has awarded since its inception in 1997, bringing total disbursements to $1.55 billion. When its leveraging power is added in, the grand total now stands at $3.9 billion. It represents a potent contribution to the federal government’s goal of substantially improving Canada’s R&D performance.

The CFI’s Innovation Fund provided $588.3 million to 208 projects, while an additional $11.1 million was allocated to 70 projects through the New Opportunities Fund. A 30% top-up totalling $179.7 million was provided for incremental operating and maintenance costs associated with the research infrastructure. The funding is being paid directly to the respective universities and does not require any matching contributions.

“This competition is very big with many larger projects and it’s also the first big tranche from the infrastructure operating fund,” says CFI president Dr David Strangway. “It will take the system a long time to absorb all this, so it will likely be two years before the next round.”

The funded projects cover the whole spectrum of the university research enterprise from photonics (Queen’s Univ) and nanofabrication (Univ of Quebec-INRS) to historical census data (Univ of Ottawa) and digital content conversion (Concordia Univ). What is striking about many of the successful projects, however, is their multidisciplinary nature, making classification an imposing challenge. Strangway says the difficulty in categorizing the projects according to discipline led him to search out research themes. He came up with several he contends are significant when trying to determine the thrusts of university research and how they dovetail with the national innovation strategy.

High-performance computing — The latest competition adds several more projects to the CFI’s ongoing support in this area, including WestGrid, the first example of grid computing in Canada. Of the top 500 high-computing facilities globally, Canada was home to 11 in 2001, up from just two in the late 1990s.

Water & Water Quality — Several water-related research projects have been funded, underlining the urgency with which the research community views the quality of Canada’s water resources.

Biodiversity — Several new centres have been supported, including a $16.5-million, integrated biodiversity laboratory at the Univ of British Columbia. Some projects also reflect the convergence of biodiversity and bioinformatics, as researchers collect and gather data for future use.

Proteomics & Genomics — The number of projects funded in these areas underscore the exploding popularity of these types of research, leveraging the funding muscle of Genome Canada. At the Univ of British Columbia, three projects have been funded in the areas of spinal cord regeneration, vision and hearing. And the largest award of the competition ($21.6 million) was made to Mount Sinai Hospital to support the ongoing research of Dr Janet Rossant. The Toronto Centre for Comparative Models of Human Disease is a state-of-the-art mouse labora-tory with high-resolution MRI equipment.

Performing Arts & New Media — The highest profile project is this group is Concordia Univ’s $8.8-million research initiative to conduct interdisciplinary research in emerging cinema and interactive media arts.

Social Sciences — Growing recognition of the importance the social sciences has spurred a number of new projects, including Carleton Univ’s Human Computer Interaction Institute and several focused on the development of powerful databases.

Strangway notes that many of the new awards build on previous CFI-funded projects, allowing universities to develop core competencies.

“There is an emerging sense that universities and colleges are the centres of clusters,” he says. “Hot areas of research are being reflected in the universities’ research plans. They want to be where the action is. and they are the principal research performers in Canada.”

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