Canada Excellence Research Chairs

The program awards non-renewable chairs at two funding levels:

• $4M over eight years (up to $500,000/year); or
• $8M over eight years (up to $1M/year)

These funding levels reflect the varying costs of research across disciplines and aims to be inclusive of all research areas. The funding supports expenses related to compensation, as well as research activities for the chairholder, the core team putting together the nomination and up to 25% of the indirect costs of the research.

UBC Okanagan has been invited to submit one (1) proposal to the Office of the VPRI.

Eligibility: Nominees must be full professors or associate professors expected to be promoted to full professor within one to two years of nomination, and cannot currently be employed at UBC.

For more information, please visit the  CERC website.

To ensure the strongest possible candidates are put forward, the Office of the VPRI is seeking nominations from candidates that would be competitive for this award.

STEP 1: Register intent to apply

Interested applicants should register by sending an email to pierre.rondier@ubc.ca by Wednesday, March 12, 2025 (5:00 p.m. PT).

In your email, please include:

• Lead and any collaborating department/faculties
• Proposed research area and up to five (5) keywords
• List of potential candidates (contact information not required at this stage)
• List of team members (if applicable)
• Requested award amount ($4M or $8M)
• Plans for securing case/in-kind support (from department/partners)
• Three UBCO reviewers
• Confirmation that the intent to apply has been discussed with faculty designate (associate dean of research or dean)

STEP 2: preliminary nomination

The preliminary nomination must be completed and emailed to  pierre.rondier@ubc.ca by Wednesday, March 26, 2025 (5:00 p.m. PT) using the UBCO CERC 2026 Preliminary Nomination template.

In their nomination, applicants must address the following criteria (max 1,500 words):

• Type of funding level ($4M or $8M; this includes up to 25% ICR)
• Contact information: lead faculty and dean, lead department/school and head/director
• UBC’s research strengths in the proposed field (assessed against global standards of excellence)
• Promise and impact of the proposed field of research
• Alignment with the Government of Canada’s ST&I priority areas for CERC
• Potential candidates for the position and likelihood of recruitment (contact information not required at this stage)
• Level of support provided by the faculty, including a long-term sustainability plan for the chair
• Equity Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) considerations:
  • How EDI was incorporated in the unit/faculty’s internal selection process
  • EDI integration into recruitment, research design and team composition