Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) Innovation Fund is a grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation that funds research infrastructure across all disciplines at Canadian universities, colleges, and research institutions. The fund supports a broad range of research programs in natural sciences, engineering, health, social sciences, humanities, arts, and interdisciplinary fields.

Projects are expected to position Canada at the forefront of knowledge generation and contribute to social, health, environmental, and economic benefits, including progress toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The 2025 competition included three streams: open exploration research, social sciences and humanities, and creation or renewal of core research facilities. Grant amounts vary by project scale and institutional allocation.

Innovation Fund | Canada Foundation for Innovation Easily find information on our funding policies and procedures in our online Policy and program guide The Innovation Fund supports a broad range of research programs including those in natural sciences and engineering, health, social sciences, humanities and the arts, as well as interdisciplinary research.

Projects funded through the Innovation Fund will help Canada remain at the forefront of exploration and knowledge generation while making meaningful contributions to generating social, health, environmental and economic benefits and addressing global challenges, such as the ones defined by the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. Status: The 2025 Innovation Fund competition is now closed.

Key document: 2025 Innovation Fund call for proposals What’s new in the 2025 competition? The 2025 competition is divided into three streams. Stream 1: Leading edge of exploration and knowledge generation (open) This stream is open to proposals from all disciplines.

Stream 2: Leading edge of exploration and knowledge generation in the social sciences, humanities and arts Social sciences, humanities and the arts (SSHA) play a critical role in the Canadian research ecosystem. For example, SSHA researchers increasingly use new technologies to leverage large amounts of data to make new discoveries that will fundamentally change how research is conducted.

To access this stream, the primary field of research must be in SSHA. To promote submissions in this stream, we invite institutions to submit one proposal with a primary field of research in SSHA that will be outside their institutional envelope. Stream 3: Creation, renewal and upgrade of core facilities An increasing number of institutions have adopted core facilities and formal policies to support them.

Core facilities have proven instrumental in attracting, retaining and training top researchers from around the globe. They also foster collaborations across academic, private, public and not-for-profit sectors. To access this stream, all requested infrastructure must be housed in and managed by a core facility.

Consult the call for proposals for more on these three streams, including tailored assessment criteria, changes to eligibility and envelope exemptions. What are the details of the 2025 competition?

Activity Deadline CFI issues draft call for proposals April 18, 2024 Deadline to submit feedback on the draft call for proposals May 17, 2024 CFI issues call for proposals June 6, 2024 Deadline to submit notices of intent October 2, 2024 Deadline to submit proposals February 4, 2025 Review by Expert Committees March to June 2025 Review by Multidisciplinary Assessment Committees September 2025 Review by Special Multidisciplinary Assessment Committee November 5, 2025 Decision by CFI Board of Directors December 2, 2025 The CFI will invest up to $425 million in research infrastructure funding and will fund up to 40 percent of a project’s eligible infrastructure costs.

We will also provide up to $127. 5 million for associated operating and maintenance costs through the Infrastructure Operating Fund .

Objectives of this competition The objectives of the 2025 competition are to: Enable internationally competitive research or technology development through the equitable participation of expert team members Enhance the capacity of institutions to conduct the research or technology development program over the useful life of the infrastructure Generate benefits to Canadians.

Eligible infrastructure projects An eligible infrastructure project involves acquiring or developing research infrastructure to increase research capacity and support world–class research. Total project costs must be greater than $1 million for proposals to be considered for this competition. It is expected that projects will be finalized promptly and completed within a reasonable time frame.

Consult the Policy and program guide and the call for proposals for more information on eligibility. What does an institution need to do before applying? To participate in any of our funding competitions, you must first make sure your institution is eligible to apply for funding, has signed an institutional agreement and that you have an account on our CFI Awards Management System (CAMS).

Find out how to prepare to apply What is the process to apply? Follow the steps below and consult the call for proposals for complete instructions on how to apply. Step 1: Submit a notice of intent Submit a notice of intent if your institution plans to seek funding through this competition.

We will use notices of intent to: Identify what expertise is needed to assess each proposal Recruit committee members Ensure that the requested infrastructure is eligible. Submit your notice of intent in the CFI Awards Management System (CAMS) The CFI has received 357 NOIs from 68 eligible institutions, for total project costs of $3. 56 billion and requesting approximately $1.

35 billion from the CFI. This list is published to encourage institutions that have similar proposals to consider potential collaborations or joint initiatives. List of notices of intent submitted to the 2025 Innovation Fund Step 2: Submit a proposal Consult the call for proposals for detailed instructions on how to submit a proposal.

Submit your proposal in the CFI Awards Management System (CAMS) What do research institutions need to do regarding research security when they apply for CFI funding?

Institutions applying for CFI funding have research security obligations at the time of application under both the Government of Canada’s National Security Guidelines for Research Partnerships and the Policy on Sensitive Technology Research and Affiliations of Concern (STRAC). Find out what your institution needs to provide with proposals to the 2025 Innovation Fund competition to meet those requirements. Where can I find out more?

Watch the video of our recent information session and consult the frequently asked questions to find out more. Transcript of the “2025 Innovation Fund info session” Well, welcome everyone. Welcome to the Innovation Fund 2025 information session for applicants.

We did have over 700 registrants, so it's a very big group today. So I'm sure people will keep popping in as we as we start the presentation. My name is Natalee Rubec.

I'm a senior programmes officer at the Canada Foundation for Innovation and I will be your your host for today. I am a white woman in her mid 40s. I have, you know, sort of longish light brown hair with glasses and I'm wearing a headset and I'm going to present the slides to you today.

I have a slide shared. You should be able to see them on your screen. Just a note is that we are gonna be recording the session today and we are going to be sharing the video after the session online on our website.

So for those of you have colleagues who may have missed it or you know might want to come back and review it but that will be available for you as well as the slides and an FAQ document that we will be preparing after the meeting. Just so that if there are questions that are you know popular, we'll definitely be answering them for everybody.

So for my French colleagues, who would like to see this information in French, we will be having a webinar tomorrow in French at the same time. So if you need the link to send us a note. I'm joined today by my excellent colleagues in the Innovation Fund team.

So shout out to them. They will be helping manage questions as we go through this presentation. So I'm gonna be presenting 34 slides and that's a lot of information.

So you'll notice that that we've disabled the chat. So if you have questions or you need a, you know something some more information use the question-and-answer feature which is a button at the top of your screen. And my colleagues will be trying to answer those as we go along.

That said, if we do end up with time at the end of presentation, we'll definitely welcome questions verbally. So if you want to ask your question using the audio, please reserve these questions until after the end of the presentation. We’ll take them in the order that the hands are raised.

So the agenda for today, I'm going to be going over some of these aspects of the Innovation Fund for some of you. You might be old hat at the Innovation Fund, others this might be your first one. We welcome everyone.

I'll talk about the budget and objectives, the timeline, some key features of the current competition, the application process and the review process. So I hope we can get through all of that as we go. 02:40 Competition Objectives and budget So the 2025 Innovation Fund has three objectives.

These objectives are very similar to ones we've had in past competitions. Enabling internationally competitive research or technology development so the equitable participation of team members enhancing capacity in institutions and generating benefits for Canadians.

Our budget is a little bit larger than the 2023 competition, so that is a 425 million in capital funding as well as the 30% IOF for operation and maintenance costs that's automatically added to our awards with the budget of $127. 5 million dollars. The way our funding works, the CFI is that we fund 40% of the award and our applicants then use that 40% to leverage the extra 60% of the project cost.

So the call for proposals went live a couple of weeks ago, on June 6th. If you haven't had an opportunity to read it, that would be an excellent starting point. The competition will be open for applications starting on June 25th is when our forms will be live in our online system.

Notices of intent are due in October, with the proposal deadline happening the first week of February on February 4th. All of this will lead to a review process which will culminate in November 2025, with decisions by our Board of Directors. One of the most exciting features we have added to this competition is the introduction of a streamed approach.

So we have 3 distinct streams, and you'll notice when you go to apply, you'll have to select the stream to which you're applying in CAMS. Stream one is the traditional innovation fund. It's open, it's opened all disciplines, all kinds of proposals.

So again, any proposal that you're thinking of submitting is likely eligible for that stream. Anything that would have been allowed in the past would be allowed in there too. Stream two is a specific stream for proposals in the social sciences, humanities and the arts.

So that's to say a one thing we've noticed is that we have had low submission rates in the past in social sciences and we're very excited to offer this option for this particular stream in this competition. And we'll be talking about some special exemptions and features of that stream in a little bit. Stream three is for the creation, renewal, and upgrade of core facilities.

So in order to be eligible for the core facility stream, all of the requested infrastructure, so 100% has to be housed in and managed by a core facility. It could be multiple cores from one facility from one particular institution. It could be cores with nodes at multiple facilities.

So we understand that you know kinds of core facilities and stages of development and kind of meta organisation and institutions varies so… You know, this is fairly open and if you think your proposal might fall into that kind of particular category, I really encourage you to go and review the assessment criteria in the call for proposals and it'll give you a clear idea of kind of what the purpose of that stream is.

05:59 What is a core facility? On the note of core facilities, we provided a definition here of a core facility. So the types of activities that they do and the type of role it has within the research ecosystem.

So this is basically if you can check all of these points to determine whether or not your operation is a core facility. One thing we've kind of had questions about is what does it mean to be kind of recognised by an institution. So what we're looking for there is that it's, you know, it's a recognised core facility with shared services.

Usually you'll have some kind of website indicating that you know how users can access it and and if you have questions about this, please don't hesitate to get in touch. We can we can give you some some guidance around that, but again recognising that not every university has a has a, you know, meta organisation of core facilities and we want to be make it open as much as possible.

You'll probably have noticed and there was a CFI special update a few months ago that we've outlined the kind of term to complete and to finalise projects. So we expect that projects submitted to the 2025 Innovation Fund should be finalised within nine months of funding decisions. So that puts it somewhere into mid 2026 for finalisation and we have outlined in this table the deadline to submit the final financial report.

And it's sort of commensurate with the size of the project in terms of total project costs. Or proposals to be eligible to the 2025 competition, they have to be greater than $1,000,000 in total costs and you'll see that, you know, under or equal to 2. 5 million.

The deadline would be 2029. And over 10 million extends all the way to 2032. So the idea here is we we don't want to leave projects open for a really long time and we have been having some trouble getting money out the door.

So we want to make sure that we're able to meet our spending targets you know, institutions are getting the money to launch the project, so projects for the 2025 Innovation Fund competition should be at an appropriate level maturity to meet these targets.

So that's to say if you have an idea, but it's not quite ready to kind of go within nine months that maybe you want to reserve that project until maybe another competition and look at the projects that are more kind of ready to kind of be implemented. We've also added some eligibility for special costs that we've heard hear from the community that these are, you know, gaps or things that are really kind of missing.

So for all streams, we're going to be providing ongoing personnel support for people who manage and operate databases. We know that a database is not a stagnant piece of infrastructure and requires kind of update and management. And often there's, you know, a specialist who was involved with the database and making it available to researchers supporting their requests.

So this is the type of personnel that we had in mind when we were talking about database personnel. Specific to stream three, we're going we've allowed eligible costs for operation maintenance for personnel, scientific and technical personnel for core facilities. So this is again something we heard and we've made available.

Just make a note that if your project is coming through a major science initiatives fund project, it won't be possible for you to request this personnel because we already funded these types of costs through the CFI MSI fund. That's not to say, that you can't be eligible for the IF you certainly can. Just that personnel might be a problem.

And when it comes to timelines for these kinds of costs, they're eligible as long as they fall within the period that has happened before the deadline to submit the final financial reports. So the table I showed on the previous slide, as long as the personnel costs are incurred in time to meet these deadlines, and that is the window of eligibility for those costs. I'm gonna take a few minutes now to talk about the application process.

10:16 Two-stage application process So, like previous funds, we have a two-stage application process done through our CFI awards management system CAMS. The first stage is applying with a notice of intent, so you'll be able to get your project information and I'll give you a little bit more detail on what's expected there. These forms will be available to you after June 25th, so they're not up yet.

What will happen is you will submit the notice of intent. The deadline, as I mentioned, is October 2nd. We’ll receive those notice of intent and you will receive a decision from us on the notice of intent.

This is new. Previously you'd submit the NOI and then the proposal module would be almost immediately accessible. There is a step this time where we're going to be validating the notice of intents to make sure that they're in the right stream, that the right projects are kind of listed to be outside of the envelope.

So we'll have an internal administrative review process for those, and then we'll send back a decision, at which point you'll get access to the proposal module and you can submit the proposal, which is Step 2 and the proposals are due at the beginning of February 2025. 11:22 Institutional envelopes Each institution has an institutional envelope.

These are listed on the final page of the call for proposal that tells you the amount of which of projects in dollar value that you can submit. At the NOI stage, all institutions are allowed to exceed their envelope by up to 10%, but at the proposal submission deadline, you have to adhere to the envelope.

We really encourage you to do as accurate as possible a cost estimate, so considering things such as inflation, cost increase due to supply chain problems. Please put these into the budget and contingency plan as accurately as you can kind of assess at this point and that way you get a like a more accurate you know number for the submission dollars.

One thing we've done this year is we increased the minimum institutional envelope from $3 million to $4 million. So looking at our smaller institutions hoping that they can, you know, provide a 25% increase. 12:18 Envelope exemptions Something we got a lot of questions out right now.

So what we have this time around is we have an exemption. So every institution is allowed to submit one social sciences, humanities and arts proposal outside of their institutional envelope. So in previous competitions, everyone could submit one.

If you're only submitting one project, you're not restricted by your envelope. If there's only one proposal in any domain, and that is not changing, it can be just, you know, in any stream, any proposal. If you're just submitting one, you're not restricted by the envelope.

However, when you get to two proposals, your one freebie is still allowed, and then if you have a second proposal that is from social sciences and humanities, then both of those proposals can be outside of your envelope. As soon as there's three or more proposals, you still have the social sciences proposal that is allowed outside of the envelope, and all of the other proposals that you submit are inside the institutional envelope.

There's a flow chart here displayed, and a description of it in the text in the call for proposals. A point of clarification that I'll just add to this is that if for the social sciences exemption, if you're an institution, you submit one as the lead institution.

You can also collaborate on other social sciences proposals, so as soon as the proposal is marked it outside the institutional envelope, it remains outside of the envelope for the lead institution as well as any collaborators. So everybody gets one proposal as lead and however many you want to collaborate on, that's fine. And for social sciences they are exempted from the envelope calculations.

13:56 Step 1: Notice of intent At the notice of intent, there are several sections in the module that you have to complete before you can submit it. Infrastructure that's located at international research facilities. If you're submitting that, make sure you're consulting with the host facility before submitting the proposal.

And if your proposal contains advanced research computing infrastructure, please consult with the Digital Research Alliance of Canada. They'll be able to answer your questions and make sure that kind of coordinated approach. These are the same kind of sections that we've had in previous competitions.

The one difference is we are we've removed the other users module. So it's just the 10 team members that will be in this particular proposal. And we really do use your suggested reviewers, so as many of those as you can send us, it's it's very much appreciated and we are really looking to diversify our reviewer pool in all sorts of dimensions this year.

So if you make an effort to include like a diverse type of reviewer in terms of geographic location, sector, expertise, membership in the one of the four under represented groups we are really looking for for those people this time around and as much as you can kind of indicate the expertise that they bring and how it relates to your proposal in the small notes section. We do appreciate that too.

When you get to the proposal module there are several sections, the project module. Some of this information will have been already kind of repopulated from the notice of intent. This is the place where we're going to have the assessment criteria which will make up kind of the bulk of the content of the application.

15:43 Objectives & assessment criteria So I'll talk a little bit about how the proposals are assessed and the assessment criteria themselves. All proposals from all funds have the same overarching objectives, so the three objectives that I stated earlier, they're listed here on this slide and they relate specifically to the five assessment criteria.

So objective 1 is going to be kind of informed by the first two assessment criteria, which are researcher, technology development and team. Similarly, Objective 2 is related to infrastructure and sustainability, and Objective 3 is related to the benefits criteria. So there's five assessment criteria matched to the three fund objectives.

16:30 Important considerations We included some information in the call because you'll have noticed that in our assessment criteria, we've added kind of a more robust approach to assessment of EDI. So we're not only just looking for, we had the team composition criterion in the last competition. We've replaced that by embedding EDI into the relevant criteria and sub-aspects of our criteria.

So in research and technology development, we know that EDI and research design and planning and how we do data collection and analysis are some examples of how that is done. You know, using an evidence-based approach. There's lots of literature on how to do this within research.

And the team assessment criteria we're looking for kind of a wide range of research outputs. Understanding that with within the implementation of the declaration of on research assessment, that it's more than more than a number. And we've included some information on on what our systemic barriers and how do we address the type of barriers to participation of people from underrepresented groups.

And in the benefits section of the of the notes before the assessment criteria we listed some health, environmental, socio-cultural and economic kinds of benefits and some information about highly qualified personnel. 17:44 Assessment criteria and sub-criteria Research or tech dev’t and Team So I'll dive a little bit deeper into the assessment criteria at this point. I won't read everything on the cell on the slide.

I should say they're quite evidence. I mean, information heavy is what I mean. I will, however, point out some of the few differences between the streams, because there are a little bit tailored to the specific kind of type of research, discipline, or type of proposal.

So for research and technology development, the standard that we're looking for is that the researchers technology development program is innovative, feasible and internationally competitive. This is for both stream one and stream two. And the team has all the experience expertise needed to conduct the proposed activities and will do so in an inclusive and equitable working environment.

So specifically what we've done is, is we expect a competency matrix in stream one, we put a specific instruction to include it in stream one, if you want to include one in a stream two proposal this is also great, but is not a requirement and we're looking again for those evidence based actions taken to enable full participation of people from underrepresented groups and early career researchers.

And ways that you're providing actions that you're taking to provide an equitable, inclusive and accessible working environment.

19:02 Assessment criteria and sub-criteria Infrastructure and Sustainability Infrastructure, we would like to know what you're requesting and provide an accurate justification of its need, preferably matching it to something that's happening in the research section and how it, you know, compliments or enhances the existing infrastructure at your institution or the partner institutions.

Sustainability, the the infrastructure will be well managed, accessible and optimally used over its useful life. So how is it going to be maintained and used? Who's going to be operating it?

How? What is your plan for access? How are you managing data and what are the operation and maintenance costs and revenue sources?

So this is the section where you probably will kind of talk to speak to the the use of the IOS funds and provide a budget for for that additional part of the award. 19:45 Assessment criteria and sub-criteria Benefits Benefits the team and its partners have a well-defined plan to transfer to research or technology development results and mobilise knowledge, and these results are likely to lead to benefits for Canadians.

So we included different examples of knowledge, knowledge transfer, knowledge, mobilisation for the different streams.

Just again acknowledging that there's like a wide variety of kinds of outputs, and you know that they all have kind of importance and value and we encourage our applicants, we require them to look at equity inclusion and how it may impact any people or communities that are kind of end users or will benefit from the research that that is being kind of conducted?

20:28 Assessment criteria and sub-criteria Research or tech dev’t and Team For stream three, we do have some specific wording changes, so in the sense that we're in proposal in proposals for streams one and two, you really are focused on a sort of a singular research project or pathway where a core facility we recognise sort of a diverse kind of users and you know supports researchers and what can be kind of a wide variety of disciplines even from the same facility.

So we're looking for how the facility will enable its research to conduct research or technology development that is innovative, feasible and internationally competitive. So for this what we you know, we were kind of looking for is a like a high-level description of the types of projects that the infrastructure will enable and then including certain aa representative sample in more detail.

So it's not necessary for the facility itself, although it can be is during you know world class research or technology development. But understanding that you may be supporting these kinds of projects in your facility as well. Another function of the core facility and we recognise that there's a high emphasis on collaboration and a network of users.

So if you know, please include information about that as well. 21:36 Assessment criteria and sub-criteria Research or tech dev’t and Team For the team, we're looking for, the team has the experience and expertise to enable multiple research and technology development activities, and we'll do so in an equitable and inclusive working environment.

So this is where you can talk about the specialised skills and and the expertise that the team members bring. So we know that it's not always just like your pure researchers, but your your team may have scientific or technical expertise and maybe you know in operating a particular kind of instrument.

So you know it would be important to kind of include someone in your team who's not just a researcher, but also might be kind of a scientific, you know, director or manager of a facility kind of thing that has that brings that kind of expertise to the facility. 22:20 Assessment criteria and sub-criteria – Infrastructure and Sustainability Infrastructure.

It's necessary appropriate and will enhance the facilities research services and how it integrates into the existing infrastructure. This is where you may also describe the kind of justification for the salary cost. So remembering that in stream three you do have this eligible cost of personnel that are operating, maintaining or managing the facility.

So that's where you describe that activity. And sustainability, we're looking at how the facilities operated and managed, how it's gonna be used and and the similar kind of sub aspects and any other streams? And then the benefits that the team and its partners have a well-defined plan to transfer research or technology development results and mobilise knowledge and that this will lead to benefits for Canadians.

So talk about the benefits of the activities that are enabled by the facilities and how it's kind of going to be kind of transferred to end users or in collaboration with communities, clinicians, private sector. We know that there's kind of a wide variety of sort of users and audiences for these kinds of activities.

We do require that the proposal fits into a certain page limit, so for English, if your project is under or equal to $10 million, you have 25 pages in English and 30 in French. And for projects over $10 million. Thirty pages in English and 36 in French.

And this is for language equity, because typically French has more words, and so