Funding, News and Announcements

Hello everyone,

The March CIHR-UD meeting was held by webcast on March 7, 2019. Here are the highlights.

CIHR Update

Pierre Côté reported on three items:

1. The University Delegates Executive Committee (UDEC) membership has been expanded by 3 members. CIHR received 11 expressions of interest. New additions are from UNB, Lakehead and UAlberta. See the full list of UDEC representatives. There will be an in-person meeting of the group on March 20-21. Items to be discussed are: future of the Foundation Grants, distribution of CIHR funds among programs, strategic plan, Project Grants, roles of UDEC and UD groups in CIHR.
2. Institute Advisory Boards are recruiting new members. Openings can be found on the CIHR website. Applications should be submitted by April 8, 2019 for this cycle.
3. CRDC Consultation – The classification system for research will be used by Tri-council, CFI and other government funding programs. The classification scheme is now open for online comments.
4. Made-in-Canada Athena SWAN – This initiative is about more that sex/gender equity for the Canadian landscape. Your feedback requested - please visit the following link.

Project Grant Update

The peer review committee mandates are evolving and the UD and UDEC groups will be involved as these changes take place. Please ensure that you identify the appropriate peer review committee for your proposal by checking for any revisions to the mandates at the time of registration to apply for funding.

The Spring 2019 Project Grant competition received 2947 registrations and it is anticipated that between 2400-2500 applications will have been received (not yet available). Recruitment of Peer review committee chairs is complete, SO recruitment is nearly complete. Reviewer recruitment is about 70% completed. Staff reported that the EDI on the committees is getting very close to targets. The peer review assignments will begin at the end of March.

Foundation Grants

The date for Notice of Decision for the Final Assessment Stage is July 16, 2019. Discussion on the future of the Foundation program are ongoing.

Strategic Competitions Update

Operating Grant: CEEHRC (Epigenetics) 2019
Application deadline 2019-04-09

Operating Grant: ECIs in Maternal, Reproductive, Child & Youth Health Registration deadline 2019-04-02; Application deadline 2019-05-14

Operating Grant: Joint Programme on Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND) 2019
Application deadline 2019-03-12

Operating Grant: New Investigator Grants in Child and Youth Health
Application deadline 2019-04-22

Other: DSEN team grants: MAGIC and CAN-AIM
Application deadline 2019-04-02

Other: Health System Impact Fellowship
Application deadline 2019-04-02

Team Grant: Food Security and Climate Change in the Canadian North Application deadline 2019-04-03

Team Grant: Indigenous Component of Healthy Life Trajectories (I-HeLTI) Application deadline 2019-05-01

Team Grant: Transnational Cardiovascular Research Projects
Application deadline 2019-04-29

Strategic Competition Results

Operating Grant: AMR: Point of Care Diagnostics in Human Health Phase 2 (201810APC)
3 out of 7 applications funded - $2M invested over 3 years           

Catalyst Grant: Breathing as One - Boehringer Ingelheim Canada COPD Grant (201811BAO)
3 out of 3 applications funded - $30k invested over 1 year

Catalyst Grant: PTSI among PSP workers (201809PPS)
22 out of 38 applications funded - $3M invested over 1 year

Team Grant: Food Security and Climate Change in the Canadian North LOI (201810FCN)
5 out of 6 applications funded - $75k invested over 1 year

Operating Grant: SU2C Canada - Metastatic Breast Cancer Dream Team (201811MBC)
1 out of 2 applications funded - $2.5M invested over 4 years

There was no information available on Gold Leaf awards, CHRP grants, or SPOR competition results.

Questions regarding policy on cannabis research funding that involves an industrial partner were deferred to a later meeting. Policy for this research is available online but may be subject to change.

Disposition of the CIHR Budget Among Funding Programs

In response to requests from the CIHR UD group, Pierre presented a graphic describing the disposition of CIHR funds among the different research funding initiatives.

95% of the funding envelope CIHR receives is for programs, 5% is for administration. Only funds in the “discretionary” category can be moved among is programs. CIHR cannot move “non-discretionary” funds into the discretionary category. About half of the CIHR envelope goes into investigator-initiated programs (Project and Foundation) currently ~$550M per year ($425M to Project and $125M to Foundation). $128M goes to institute-directed initiatives, ~$30M goes to training and career support programs, $210M to Tri-council initiatives and $116M to government priority programs (this includes SPOR). While this information is useful, several questions from delegates were left unanswered. Stay tuned!

Next CIHR-UD meeting is on April 4, 2019. Bye for now!!

Roger McLeod
CIHR University Delegate
Associate Dean (Research)
Faculty of Medicine