Next round of Canada Research Chairs to be unveiled next week

Ottawa, ON – April 1, 2004 – The Canada Foundation for Innovation says that the next round of Canada Research Chairs will be made public on Monday, April 5. The announcement will be made at the University of Calgary by Lucienne Robillard, minister of industry and minister responsible for the Canada Research Chairs program.

Launched in 2000, the research chairs program stands at the centre of a national strategy to make Canada one of the world’s top five countries for research and development. At that time, the federal government allocated $900 million to establish 2,000 research professorships in universities across the country.

So far a total of 1,035 research chairs have been awarded, with 477 of the grants coming from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada, 325 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and 233 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Seventy-four percent have been awarded to candidates already in Canada, and 26% to expatriate or international candidates.

Chairholders are also eligible for infrastructure support from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to help acquire state-of-the-art equipment essential to their work.