August sees nearly $400M in funding announcements for CFI

Ottawa, ON – This month, the federal government has announced nearly $400 million in funding support for the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI).

The announcements included $182 million in funds for the Leaders Opportunity Fund (LOF) in early August, and $200.5 million for the CFI’s Leading Edge Fund (LEF) and the New Initiatives fund (NIF) last week.

The LOF enables institutions to acquire new infrastructure in order to attract and retain top-level researchers. The LEF helps them to build on their existing areas of research priority, while the NIF focuses on developing new, promising areas of research and technology development.

“Tomorrow’s prosperity depends on our ability to compete within a diverse, global economy – to get there, we need to start with competitive infrastructure,” said Dr Indira Samarasekera, president of the University of Alberta, where the LEF/NIF funding announcement was made last week. “World-class facilities are a magnet for global talent, and these funds make a tremendous difference in researchers’ capacity to conduct leading-edge interdisciplinary research and discovery learning.”