Quebec scores well with two out of five awards in first CFREF competition

The federal government has announced the complete suite of successful research programs funded under the initial competition of the $1.5-billion Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF), with Quebec institutions taking two of the five awards. The results of the $350-million competition were unveiled in the days immediately prior to the call of the federal election on August 2 and clear the way for the next, much larger competition later this year with $950 million up for grabs. A third, $250-million round is slated for FY21-22.

The first and largest of the awards ($114 million) was announced July 28th in support of the Univ of Toronto's Medicine by Design program, focused on synthetic and computational biology (R$, July 29/15).

The next largest award ($98 million) went to Laval Univ for Sentinal North, a multi-faceted initiative aimed at the development of new technologies, health and sustainable development in the Canadian Arctic. The program draws on Laval Univ's strength in Arctic sciences, brain health and optics-photonics as well as the expertise of companies and organizations, including Ericsson Canada, TeraXion, Quebec Photonics Network and Nunavut Research Institute.

The other Quebec-based award goes to the Univ of Sherbrooke, which received $33.5 million for its From Quantum Science to Quantum Technology initiative. The project focuses on the interface between quantum materials and quantum information science while taking advantage of Sherbrooke's expertise in micro-nanofabrication engineering. It also further cements linkages to other concentrations of quantum research such as Toronto's Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and corporations including IBM, Microsoft Corp, Google and Lockheed Martin Corp.

At the Univ of British Columbia, $66.5 million in CFREF funding will facilitate ramp-up of the recently established Quantum Matter Institute.The From Quantum Science to Quantum Technology initiative will allow the institute to attract and retain new research talent, expand international partnerships (especially the Max Planck-UBC Centre for Quantum Materials) and train future quantum matter researchers.

The project's aim is to support the entire research lifecycle from expanding the institute's core strength of investigating and understanding the fundamental properties of new quantum materials to the control of quantum materials and engineering devices, with the end goal of translating discoveries into new applications and products.

The Univ of Saskatchewan will use its $37.2-million CFREF award to build capacity at its new Phenotyping and Imaging Research Centre. The Designing Crops for Global Food Security initiative aims to create a new generation of designer crops by drawing upon the university's strengths in agriculture, bioresources and sustainable crop production. Partners include MDA Systems Ltd, PotashCorp, Saskatchewan Canola Development Commission, Agrisoma Biosciences and the Canadian Light Source.

The inaugural CFREF competition drew 43 notices of intent with a total value of $2.56 billion. The funding requests ranged from $2.54 million to $203.4 million and the average request was $59.9 million

CFREF was announced in the 2014 budget in response to Advantage Canada Research Excellence — a joint proposal by the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities and the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (now known as Universities Canada) (R$, February 24 & December 10/14). The fund is intended to help institutions build on previous investments in key research areas and enhance their global ranking and competitiveness.

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