Government of Canada backs more than 5,500 trailblazing Canadian researchers

Canada’s highly skilled and talented researchers are world-renowned for their leading scientific breakthroughs, discovering bold, innovative approaches and contributing to solving our world’s toughest problems. Canada’s academic community has always played an integral role in driving innovation, enriching Canadian society, helping grow our economy and training the next generation of leading experts.

Today, the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, announced support for more than 5,500 researchers from coast to coast to coast. This major investment of over $550 million, part of the government’s ongoing effort to support Canada’s science and research sector, will strengthen the country’s research enterprise and have real and lasting impacts on Canadians and the world.

This includes funding for:

• the New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF) Transformation stream, awarding grants totalling $144 million over six years to seven Canadian-led research teams for large-scale, interdisciplinary research projects with the potential to realize lasting change;
• the Canada Research Chairs program, supporting 188 new and renewed chairs and their research teams at 43 Canadian institutions through an investment of $151 million to help them achieve research excellence; and
• the granting agencies’ scholarships and fellowships programs, which will provide funding, through an investment of more than $260 million, for more than 5,300 promising graduate students and emerging researchers from across Canada whose research spans many disciplines.

Some of the recipients and institutions receiving funding include the following:

• The University of Alberta is receiving $24 million for a project, led by Dr. Brenda Parlee, that aims to empower Indigenous peoples and engage Indigenous youth to apply their knowledge to help Canada and the world understand the impact of trends in biodiversity.
• Queen’s University is receiving $24 million for a project, led by Dr. Cathleen Crudden, seeking to develop a new approach to the protection of metal surfaces by forming carbon-to-metal coatings with unprecedented strength and resistance to oxidation.
• Dr. Noémie-Manuelle Dorval Courchesne, from McGill University, is receiving $600,000 to address environmental sustainability by replacing plastics, textiles and electronics with biomaterials designed to meet evolving industrial and societal needs.
• Chloe Crosschild, from the University of British Columbia, is receiving $105,000 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research 2021 scholarships and fellowships for her work on enhancing relations between Indigenous women and registered nurses and journeying toward transformative reconciliation to foster maternal health equity.

The research will spur major advances in all scientific fields, including revolutionizing organ transplants, merging biology with engineering to solve sustainability challenges and fostering Indigenous language revitalization. The Government of Canada is committed to supporting expert leaders and students, like these recipients, in their pursuit of scientific discovery and action leading to a more prosperous future for Canada and beyond.