Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) Innovation Fund (IF) 2025

Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) Innovation Fund (IF) 2025 is sponsored by Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). Supports a broad range of research programs, including those in the arts, through infrastructure funding.

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 provides investments in research infrastructure across the full research spectrum, from the most fundamental investigations to applied research and technology development, and across all research disciplines from natural sciences and engineering, life sciences and health, to social sciences, humanities and the arts.

These investments help keep Canada competitive, resilient and ready to tackle complex national and global challenges. Through this competition, we will invest in research environments that are equitable, inclusive and equipped to build Canada into the world’s leading hub for science and innovation. Status: The 2027 Innovation Fund competition is now open.

The deadline to submit notices of intent is September 29, 2026. Key document: 2027 Innovation Fund competition call for proposals What are the details of the 2027 competition?

Activity Deadline CFI issues draft call for proposals April 14, 2026 Deadline to submit feedback on the draft call for proposals May 14, 2026 CFI issues call for proposals June 3, 2026 Deadline to submit notices of intent September 29, 2026 Deadline to submit proposals February 2, 2027 Review by Expert Committees March to July 2027 Review by Multidisciplinary Assessment Committees September 2027 Review by Special Multidisciplinary Assessment Committee October 2027 Decision by CFI Board of Directors November 2027 Competition budget The CFI will invest up to $325 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 $97. 5 million for associated operating and maintenance costs through the Infrastructure Operating Fund . Objectives of this competition The objectives of the 2027 Innovation Fund competition are to: Strengthen researchers’ ability to excel and compete internationally Build sustainable research capacity Generate relevant and impactful benefits for Canadians.

For this competition, there are three streams with tailored assessment criteria. There is no predetermined distribution of funding among the 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 (SSHA) To access this stream, the primary field of research must be in SSHA. Stream 3: Creation, renewal and upgrade of core facilities 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, eligibility and envelope exemptions. 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) We will publish a list here of the notices of intent we receive.

The list will include short project summaries. We encourage institutions with complementary projects to consider potential collaborations or multi-institutional initiatives, where appropriate. 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 2027 Innovation Fund competition to meet those requirements. Where can I find out more?

Watch the video or consult the slides of our recent information session to find out more. A frequently asked questions section will be added shortly. Please check back soon.

Transcript of the “2027 Innovation Fund information session” Information session for the 2027 Innovation Fund competition Note: This transcript was automatically generated and may contain inaccuracies. All right, let's get this started since we have a lot of content to get through. Hello, good afternoon for those of you who are in the same time zone as me.

If not, good morning or good evening. Thank you for joining us today. Welcome to the 2027 Innovation Fund information session for applicants.

We've had over 400 people registered for this webinar, so we're very pleased to see the interest in the competition. My name is Alex. I'm a senior programs officer here at the Canada Foundation for Innovation, and I'll be your host today.

Over the next hour or so, I'll walk you through some key aspects of the competition. To be very clear, though, for anybody worried, all of the information we're going to be discussing here today can be found in our call for proposals. There's nothing new.

There's nothing secret here. This session will just essentially allow us to highlight some of the key elements, some of the changes, as well as provide an opportunity for the community, you guys, to ask us some questions directly. So before we get started, just a few housekeeping items.

You may have noticed that we've disabled the chat. So during the presentation, we invite you to use the Q&A function to submit any questions you might have. I'm joined by our excellent team in the background.

They'll be monitoring and answering your questions throughout the session, so don't hesitate. The Q&A will be moderated, however, which means you won't see your questions appear publicly until they've been published by the team. So just if you don't see it right away, no need to spam.

Give the team a moment or two to review and write an answer to your question. If you prefer to ask your questions verbally, there will be a dedicated Q&A period, sorry, at the end of this presentation. Of course, whether verbally or in writing, you're always welcome to ask your questions either in French or in English.

So for those who are interested in hearing all of the information we're about to go through today in the other official language, we will be hosting the same webinar again tomorrow in French. And the last little housekeeping note for today, the session is being recorded. We will be sharing the slides for the session, the recording of this webinar, as well as a frequently asked questions document in the coming weeks after the webinar.

So feel free to share this with other people who might not have been able to be here or if you want to watch it again yourself. In case this makes you nervous though that we're going to be publishing this, don't worry, if you do speak up during the Q&A session at the end, it will not be shared publicly. We're only going to be sharing the informational part.

The Q&A session will not be made publicly available. The Q&A session might inform the content of the frequently asked questions document, so in that way the whole community can benefit your questions, but we won't be airing it out publicly. Okay, today's agenda.

We'll start with the competition objectives and budget, and follow it up with the timeline and some of the fund's key features. Then we'll move through the application and the review process, and then we'll close with some helpful resources and some time for questions. So let's get into it with the competition objectives and the budget.

So the Innovation Fund is designed to support projects that meet our three main competition objectives, which are to strengthen our researchers' abilities to excel and compete internationally, build sustainable research capacity, and generate meaningful and impactful benefits for Canadians. These are the central objectives of the competition and inform the assessment criteria we'll touch on later.

In terms of funding, the CFI will invest up to $325 million in infrastructure, covering up to 40% of a total eligible project cost. As per usual, applicants are expected to leverage additional funding from other partners to cover the remaining 60%. Typically, this includes provincial funding, institutional funding, funding from industry or other granting agencies.

And through our infrastructure operating fund, we continue to grant 30% of the CFI funded value towards operating and maintenance costs, meaning an additional $97. 5 million or up to $97. 5 million will be provided through this competition.

Now, if we look at the timeline, so the call for proposal was launched on June 3rd. The next key milestone is the deadline to submit your notice of intent, which is on September 29th, followed by the full proposal deadline on February 2nd. The review process will take place between the months of March and October 2027, culminating with funding decisions by our board of directors in November 2027.

So if we go through some of the key features here. So we've continued with the three streams that were introduced in the previous competitions. So when you go to apply, you'll have to select which stream you're applying to.

Since each stream has its own focus and slightly modified assessment framework, that this choice is rather important. So stream one is your traditional stream is open to all disciplines and all projects. Stream 2 is dedicated to social sciences, humanities, and the arts.

So proposal submitted to this stream must have as their primary field of research something in the sciences, humanities, and arts. Or sorry, social sciences, humanities, and arts, to be clear. Stream 3 supports the creation, renewal, or upgrades of core facilities.

Key here is that all of the requested infrastructure for any project submitted to the third stream must be housed in and managed by a core facility. An important point to emphasize since we do get this question a bit is that there's no predetermined allocation of funding across these different streams. To which stream should I apply?

So as I mentioned, choosing the right stream is a critical step. So carefully review the definitions for each stream and the respective assessment criteria to ensure that your project clearly aligns with whatever stream you choose. We've provided this flow chart in the call to help guide applicants in their choice, and I'll guide you through it now.

So the first critical step you're going to ask is if your project is mature enough to meet the deadlines for award finalization and completion that we've set out in the call and we'll actually touch on those in a moment. If the project is mature, great. Moving on.

If it's not, perhaps may I wait for the next competition. Second question to ask yourself, is all of the infrastructure I'm requesting going to be housing a core facility and serve a variety of research programs? If yes, then we're going to stream 3.

If it's not, then you can ask yourself, okay, is the field of research within the social sciences, humanities and arts? If yes, great, stream two. If not, stream one.

And if ever you're in doubt, please reach out to your research office or the CFI for guidance on which stream to choose. Now, we've talked about core facilities a little bit, so we want to take a moment to clarify what we mean by a core facility. So a core facility typically provides shared infrastructure, or sorry, shared access to resources that are generally too complex or costly for individual researchers to maintain.

This can include things like specialized equipment, expertise, services or analysis, and training. Moreover, these core facilities are expected to be broadly accessible, serve a variety of research programs, be formally recognized by their institution, have a defined, sound, and dedicated governance and management structures as well as personnel.

Importantly, in the context of the innovation fund, Core facilities cannot be predominantly focused on computing infrastructure. So a core facility that is just computing infrastructure is not eligible to request funding through this competition. Given that we've received a lot of questions about our core facility stream, I want to take a moment here to hopefully preemptively address some of those common questions.

So firstly, core facilities can be distributed across multiple sites and institutions. They still have to be all considered cores. It all still has to go in a core facility.

but it can be distributed. Secondly, a core facility funded through the CFI's major science initiatives fund, so our MSI fund. So a core facility that's funded through the MSI can submit a project to this competition.

The only caveat is that they cannot request funding for the expanded personnel costs that are allowed through stream 3, since these costs are already eligible under their MSI funding. Thirdly, though, as I mentioned, core facilities that are predominantly focused on computing infrastructure are not eligible, you can still request ancillary or complementary computing infrastructure through this through the Stream 3 funding.

Fourthly, a core facility director can be a team leader, meaning they can be the one to create or submit a project. The only requirement is that the individual who's leading or submitting the project be affiliated with the administrative institution. This affiliation requirement does not apply to any co-leads or other team members that might be added to the project.

So in short, yes, a core facility director can submit a project, can lead a project. The only consideration is they have to be affiliated with the administrative institution. The formal recognition of a core, so what is a core?

Whether you are you formally a core is left within the institution, within the hands of the institution. So talk to your research office, talk to your institution. The CFI is not the one who makes that determination.

And since we're on the general topic of frequently asked questions about cores, I want to take a moment to mention two additional things that are other kind of common themes that have come up. First, as you may have noticed in our definition of what is a core, and as we're going to see a little bit later on in the assessment criteria, Stream 3 proposals are expected to demonstrate impact through a range of research activities.

So we don't expect Stream 3 proposals to be centered on a single research project. So this notion of serving a large variety of research programs can be met, obviously, in a variety of different ways.

For example, a facility can support multiple disciplines, so they can just be Be truly, extremely multidisciplinary, or it can be that you're supporting an exceptionally broad user base within a slightly more narrower focused set of disciplines, so ultimately, always up to the applicants to determine the best way to demonstrate that they've met the assessment criteria, but to be very clear for stream three.

The expectation is that there's impact through a range of research activities. And second, new core facilities are eligible. So as I mentioned before, as with any submission, you still demonstrate how you meet the assessment criteria.

And of course, how you go about that might change on the approach or your approach might differ based on the maturity of your core. So for example, in stream 3, we ask that applicants describe the current or planned user base. So because we say planned, this implies that an established user base is not required.

But if you were to request funding for a new core, you would still have to demonstrate a credible, justified or clear rationale for the anticipation user demand, your planned users. So new facilities are eligible. You just have to maybe take a different approach to justifying how you meet all the assessment criteria.

So if we move on from cores to project readiness. So as I've mentioned a few times, we've talked about mature projects. So project readiness is an important consideration.

Submitted projects should demonstrate a clear ability to become operational and achieve impacts within a reasonable time frame. So to be specific, projects funded through this competition are expected to be finalized within nine months of the funding decision and be completed. And by completed, we mean having submitted your final financial report within the timelines relevant to the size of the project.

So you'll see in the table here. Depending on the size of your project, how much money you're requesting, that deadline is, can be a little earlier or a little later. Projects should be of an appropriate maturity.

And if there's doubt about the ability of a project to be completed within these timeframes, might be advisable to wait until the next competition. There's also a minimum financial threshold. So the CFI contribution must be equal to or greater than $400,000.

Since the CFI typically funds about 40% of a project, this means that the total project costs are usually going to be at least $1,000,000. Apologies there. So here we wanted to highlight a few eligible personnel costs.

To be clear, these are just a few examples of eligible costs and don't represent an exhaustive list, an exhaustive list. For a more thorough description of all eligible costs, consult our policy and program guide. So the first and third bullet point here that you see are not newly eligible costs, but they are still fairly new eligible cost categories overall for the competition.

So we want to highlight them here again for anyone who might be unfamiliar with the change. So the first bullet point, the personnel support for databases continues to be an eligible capital cost for all streams. So right here, We recognize the importance of digital infrastructure, as well as their dynamic nature, which might require regular updates or management.

So, continues to be eligible. Same with the third bullet point. So, Stream 3 continues to have access to a unique cost category intended to cover the salaries of technical and scientific personnel responsible for the general operation and maintenance of the core facility infrastructure.

Same as the last competition, we're continuing with that. What is new to this competition is the expansion of eligible personnel costs to include what we call community interface personnel. So that's the second bullet point you see on the slide here.

These are salary costs for individuals involved in the design and development of partnerships and community networks. These costs are eligible for all proposals which have their primary field of research in the social sciences, humanities, and arts.

So as a final note here, a reminder that eligible costs, including personnel costs, can be incurred as early as November 1st, 2025, and as late as the relevant deadline to submit your final financial report. So as we saw earlier, that final date will vary based on the size of your project. One another section that was new this year.

So Canada has developed a defense industrial strategy, making research in defense and dual use technologies a timely topic. So here at the CFI, we always try to anchor each innovation fund in the current national and international context. So that's why in the call, we've identified some thematic areas that are particularly relevant for today.

In alignment with this strategy and in pursuit of developing Canadian capacity, we encourage applicants to consider partnering with federal initiatives and organizations as applicable and relevant to your project. As for the CFI, what these collaborations mean is that the CFI will work with the Department of National Defense, DND, to help them identify projects that may be of interest to them.

Practically, DND may identify projects of interest to them based on the public NOI information. And after obtaining appropriate permissions from institutions and researchers, the CFI might share the relevant NOIs, full proposals, and expert committee reports for those projects of interest. And we may also invite DND representatives to observe the relevant expert committee reviews.

At their discretion, DND may contact applicants directly about their projects. Based on the questions we've received from the community about this new topic or this new language, I should say, in the call, the most important thing I want to stress here is that the competition budget, the assessment criteria, and the review process all remain the same.

So regardless of your project's alignment, with defense or dual use technologies or collaborations with those federal agencies we mentioned. There's no fast tracking or prioritization or funding set aside for these types of projects. No change in the budget assessment criteria or review process.

So some more additional language we've added to the call. So we recognize that research excellence includes strengthening indigenous self-determination, leadership and research capacity. So in the call, you'll notice we've taken some space to describe what we mean by indigenous research.

I've summarized and paraphrased it here to mean research that is conducted by, with, or grounded in First Nations, Metis, or Inuit communities and their knowledge systems. It requires respectful and meaningful engagement and must respond to community needs and priorities.

So we provide this definition because, as you'll see a little bit later in the presentation, We ask applicants to identify if their proposals involve indigenous research. So this definition provides a framework for you to be able to answer that question.

This question is important to us because it helps us to guide our recruitment of the review panel by ensuring that there are members with the appropriate expertise and in indigenous research, where relevant to a proposal. All right, so those were the key features. So now we're going to jump into the application process.

It's the most technical part of the webinar. So the application process has two stages. Both of these steps are managed through our CFI awards management system, CAMS, and you should already be able to access the NOI form through our system.

So the first stage of applying is our notice of intent, or NOI, where we gather basic high-level information about your project. These NOIs are not evaluated, but do have two primary purposes. Firstly, an administrative purpose that includes things like confirming your stream eligibility, respective envelope allocations, things like that.

And secondly, and most importantly, the NOI guides our initial recruitment efforts. This means the information you provide in your NOI is critical in positioning the type of expertise required for review, and therefore impacts who we start to recruit to review your proposal. The second stage of the application process is the submission of your full proposal.

It's important to note here that access to your full proposal module will only be granted after we've completed our administrative review of the NOIs. So don't panic if you submit your NOI and don't immediately have access to your proposal module. We work to complete our admin review as quickly as possible, but there's a bit of a turnaround time between the submission deadline and access to your proposal module.

You should receive a notice directly from CAMS once the NOI review has been completed and we've granted access to the proposal module. So in the competition, we use what we call institutional envelopes to control the volume of proposals that are submitted and maintain an approximate 30% success rate overall. Our primary aim by limiting the volume of proposals is to reduce reviewer and applicant burdens.

So these envelopes fix the upper limit of CFI funding that institutions can submit. or request through the competition. And these envelope amount do vary a little bit by institution, so the details of your specific institution can be found in the last page of the call.

It's important to note at the NOI stage, institutions are allowed to exceed their envelope limits by about 10%, but at the proposal stage, the submissions must adhere to the limits set by the envelope. This additional 10% at the NOI is to allow for a little bit more flexibility earlier in the process when institutions and researchers might still be finalizing their submission portfolios.

So you may have also noticed in the call that we've added some new language around envelope sharing for multi-institutional projects. So though the expectations outlined by this new language are not new to our process, we have made this clear in the call this time around. So we wanted to highlight it here.

In short, this applies to projects that have a collaborating institution that is contributing a portion of their envelope. In these circumstances, we ask that the envelope contribution of the collaborating institution be proportional to the value of the infrastructure we'll house, or to its scientific contribution to the project.

Scientific contributions is a little broad, but it can mean things such as bringing on unique expertise or translating outputs to research, research outputs to industry. So now that we've talked about the envelopes, we can get into the exemptions to these envelopes. So here by exemption, we mean projects or project value requests that are not counted against the envelope allocation of an institution.

There are two possible paths two exemptions, and they're stackable, meaning an institution can benefit from both. So we'll talk about the first one. So as represented by the first example here on the left of the diagram, if an institution submits or collaborates on a single proposal within the competition, that institution is not limited by their envelope.

In other words, if your institution is involved in a single proposal, they're not restricted by and can exceed their envelope should it be relevant to the project. We call this the single proposal exemption. And to be clear, when I say involved, I mean either as lead or as collaborator.

And by collaborator, that means having contributed a portion of your envelope to a project. The second possible path to exemption is for proposals with a primary field of research in the social sciences, humanities, and arts.

So per the competition parameters, each institution can submit a single project with a primary field of research in social sciences, humanities, and arts without this proposal counting towards their total envelope allocation. So we call this the SSHA exemption. Important here, collaborators on an SSHA exemption project also have their contributions exempted from their envelope allocations.

So if you are an institution, you can submit one SSHA project that you flag as exempted, and any collaborator on that project, their contribution will also be exempted from their envelopes. So as an institution, you can lead a single SSHA exempted project, but you may collaborate on as many other SSHA exempted projects as you wish that are led by other institutions.

So as I mentioned, these exemptions, so the single proposal exemption and the SSHA exemption are stackable. So if we go to the second example in this diagram here in the middle, so if an institution submits or participates on 2 projects, one of which has their primary field of research in the social sciences, humanities, and arts, they would not be restricted by their envelope.

This is because one of the projects would fall under the SSHA exemption, assuming it's been flagged as that SSHA exempted project by the lead institution, leaving one other project and this other project would be a singular project and therefore eligible for the single proposal exemption. So if you as an institution submit two projects, one of them falls under the SSHA exemption, the other could fall under the single proposal exemption.

In the third example, illustrated all the way in the right in the diagram here, if an institution submits or collaborates on three or more proposals, they can no longer benefit from the single proposal exemption. They may still benefit from the SSHA exemption if one of their projects has their primary field of research in the social sciences, humanities, and the arts.

All right, so we've talked about the envelopes that we've talked about the limits and exemptions on submissions. So now we can dig into the actual applications. And the first stage is the notice of intent.

So as I mentioned earlier, this is a shorter submission geared towards assessing eligibility of the project as well as supporting early reviewer recruitment to expedite the review process as a whole. So when you go to submit your NOI, you'll be asked to enter basic project information. This includes things like the project title, the amount requested, keywords.

You'll then be asked to identify any collaborating institutions. This is especially key for validating envelope contributions as we just discussed. And subsequently, we ask for a short project summary, so a simple language or layman's language summary that will be made public on our website to encourage possibilities for collaboration.

Next section is the team. Here you can identify up to 10 individuals that are key to the success of the project's activities. Team members can be comprised of individuals from different institutions, sectors, and countries as appropriate.

You can identify 2 team leaders. And of course, as always, we strongly