Research Communities Grants
NSERC and Communications Security Establishment (CSE) Canada are partnering to fund Research Communities to conduct unclassified research on cutting-edge technologies in areas of strategic importance to CSE and the Government of Canada. This is the second of four calls through the joint Research Communities grants.
For this call, CSE is the sole partner organization; no additional partner organizations will be accepted. CSE is Canada’s foreign signals intelligence agency and technical authority for cyber security and information assurance.
The focus of this funding call is on exploratory analysis for unstructured data, including text, images, audio, video and more. Key areas of interest include:
- Vectorization of unstructured data
- Approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) search
- Dimension reduction
- Clustering and outlier detection
- Interactive visualization
- Disposable local models
CSE’s objective is the development of a new, novel and interdisciplinary Research Community, defined as a group of researchers — and associated highly qualified personnel (HQP) — from multiple Canadian universities working in related domains and sharing NSERC-CSE funds awarded to their project(s). Applications with a clear path to grow a broader, sustainable community of interest that will endure beyond the conclusion of the grant period will be of particular interest.
Visit the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) website for more information on the Research Communities grants.
This program is currently closed. The details below reflect the previous call and are for general information purposes only. Updates will be posted as soon as the next round is announced.
Value and Duration
$700,000 (small project) or $1,400,000 (large project) per year over four years.
Eligibility
The applicant, or at least one of the co-applicants, must be a Canadian citizen, eligible for a TOP SECRET security clearance and willing to work in Ottawa at CSE for a minimum of two weeks per year. The list of Research Community members must be submitted to CSE within one year of the grant award and updated each year in which the grant is held. The identified researcher(s) must maintain their security clearance for the entire grant period. See classified research for details.
The list of co-applicants must include eligible academic researchers from multiple Canadian universities working in related domains. Researchers (as applicant or co-applicant) may participate in only one application under this call for proposals.
Deadlines
- Approval Form and Letter of Intent (LOI) submission to the Office of the Vice-President (Research, Innovation and International) (OVPRII): October 9, 2024
- LOI submission to sponsor: October 16, 2024 before 8 p.m. (ET)
- Full Alliance proposal (by invitation only): February 26, 2025
Special Requirements
Applicants must submit an LOI using NSERC’s online system. The LOI must be on the provided template.
How to Apply
- Submit an internal Carleton Approval Form through our central awards management database cuResearch.
- Submit an external application to NSERC.
Contact Us
Katie Harriman: katie.harriman@carleton.ca