$50M awarded in NSERC funding

Ottawa, ON – Funding worth more than $503 million has been awarded for the 2006 NSERC Grants and Scholarships competitions. The funding was awarded to some 8,800 professors and students across Canada, following national, peer-reviewed competitions conducted by NSERC.

As a result of the current competition, some 3,000 professors from across Canada will receive $383.4 million in Discovery Grants to support their research in the natural sciences and engineering. (These awards are normally paid out over five years.) In addition, 2,341 young university researchers – 2,086 at the graduate level and 255 at the postdoctoral level – will receive $100 million to pursue their studies in these fields, while 3,466 undergraduate students will receive Undergraduate Student Research Awards worth a total of $18.7 million to give them a hands-on research experience in a laboratory.