CFI competition awards $666 million to support $1.3 billion in infrastructure projects

Canada's institutional research infrastructure received a $1.435-billion boost with the announcement of the latest major competitions by the Canada Foundation for Innovation. The CFI awarded a total of $666.1 million which will leverage an additional $768.6 million from provincial and other sources.

The $512.4 million in awards were nearly evenly split between the existing projects through the Leading Edge Fund (LEF) ($247.7 million) and the new projects through the New Initiatives Fund (NIF) ($264.7 million). A further $153.7 million was awarded through the associated Infrastructure Operating Fund for a total of $666 million. Overall, the competition supports 133 projects at 41 institutions.

The latest competition — originally budgeted at approximately $400 million boosted by a $150-million infusion in the last Budget (R$, February 9/09) — attracted 354 proposals worth $1.4 billion, representing a 38% success rate. That compares favourably to the previous competition for LEF and NIF competition for which the success rate was just 18%. Even with the boost in money available, however, approximately $100 million worth of proposals judged to be excellent and recommended for funding remain unfunded.

"We had to make some difficult choices," says CEO president Dr Eliot Phillipson. "Budget 09 added $150 million to our current competition and boosted it to $512 million (excluding infrastructure support). It was a way of boosting the amount we had available. There would have been another $112 million in capital projects unfunded had we not received it. "

Not surprisingly, the Univ of Toronto – Canada's undisputed academic research powerhouse – secured the largest amount of funding ($58.9 million), closely followed by the Univ of Montreal (see chart). There were several smaller universities that did extremely well, most notable Queen's Univ and the Univ of Victoria. Queen's received $42.7 million to support seven projects with nearly half ($19.3 million) going to CMC Microsystems. The organization will use the money to fund a $60-million project called emSYSCAN, with the aim of developing equipment for research into a new generation of embedded computerized systems.

UVic received $33.5 million for four projects with by far the largest amount going to a project destined for TRIUMF, located on the campus of the Univ of British Columbia. TRIUMF received $17.8 million towards the development of a $52-million superconducting electron accelerator, a key component of the lab's push to produce MO-99 medical isotopes using photo fission (R$, May 19/09)

Other awards of note include

* $10.5 million for a Cell and Tissue Research Centre at the Univ of Alberta;

* $11.5 million for quantitative cell biology and proteomics at Mount Sinai Hospital;

* $12.5 million for a pancreatic cancer genome project and data coordination for the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research's Centre for International Cancer Genome Consortium;

* $10 million to expand the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics,

* $10.5 million for particle astrophysics experiments at the SNOLAB in Sudbury;

$10.5 million for a disease to therapy initiative at the McGill University Life Sciences Complex; and,

* $9.2 million for the discovery, development and validation of biomarkers and theragnostic approaches at the Univ of Montreal.

new strategic plan in development

The additional $150 million funding for the current competition received in the last Budget was part of a $750-million commitment to the CFI with the bulk ($600 million) tagged for a new competition to be held before the end of 2010. That competition will address the S&T priorities established by the federal government and be guided by a strategic plan which the CFI is now developing in conjunction with the Industry department.

Extensive consultations for the new strategy are complete and the findings of that exercise were relayed to the CFI board last month. A special board meeting will be convened in September to discuss a draft document, followed by discussions with the Industry minister and staff. Phillipson says the consultations didn't produce any push for dramatic change although the CFI's role in support of knowledge translation and sustaining existing initiatives featured prominently in the discussions.

"Commercialization is further downstream. Our space is knowledge translation as a precursor to commercialization," says Phillipson. "Then there's the whole question of sustaining versus further new investments and finding a balance. The consultations were extensive and intense and give us a great idea of what is happening out there."

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