Financial Post online – Funding opportunities for the academic and research sector

Academic and research institutions are crucial to driving Canada’s innovation economy—that’s why governments across the country offer over 2000 funding programs supporting this sector.

In Budget 2010, the federal government announced a comprehensive review of support for research and development (R&D) activities in Canada, which resulted in what is often referred to as the Jenkins panel report on federal support for R&D. A frequently raised issue during the consultation process was the importance of supporting efficient collaboration between post-secondary institutions and the private sectors.

“Some frequent themes in this regard were that (i) many programs are not known to as many businesses as they should be and (ii) businesses that learn of the existence of programs are often bewildered by the array of choices across many departments and agencies,” the authors of the report, titled Innovation Canada: A Call to Action, wrote.

According to the latest numbers from Statistics Canada, the federal government disbursed approximately $12 billion in support of the science and technology sector in 2011-2012. What’s more, a recent study from The Funding Portal has identified 2,286 different public funding programs offered by Canada’s federal, provincial and municipal governments that are available to the academic and research sectors, of which a total of 704 are sector-specific. The Portal has also identified 187 additional programs offered by the private sector and foundations, for a total of 2,469 funding programs available to Canada’s public and private sector researchers.

With an annual budget of about $1.09 billion, the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) is one of the best-known funders for this sector. About $345 million of NSERC’s annual budget is distributed through the Discovery Grants program, through which researchers typically receive up to five years of funding to support ongoing research efforts and explore new avenues as they emerge.

An example of a provincial funder is Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE), which co-invests in commercialization and innovation projects arising out of Ontario’s colleges, universities and research hospitals. OCE offers a range of commercialization programs under the umbrella Industry Academic Collaboration Program (IACP), as well as the Special Energy Fund (which focuses on cleantech) and other complimentary programs offered through the Centre for Commercialization of Research (CCR).

An example of a not-for-profit organization catering to Canada’s academic and research sector is Mitacs, which partners with companies, government and academia to coordinate collaborative industry-university research projects. One of its most popular programs is Mitacs-Accelerate, which matches post-secondary students from over 50 research-based universities across the country with companies in need of interns to work on research projects.

Tags: