The specific objectives of this funding opportunity are to:

1. Establish a national avian influenza research hub that supports the coordination and knowledge mobilization of avian influenza research activities in Canada and internationally, where feasible.
2. Foster collective impact and scientific excellence in avian influenza research by facilitating meaningful and culturally safe engagements between avian influenza researchers and relevant decision-makers and knowledge users from diverse sectors, jurisdictions, and perspectives, such as federal, provincial, territorial, and Indigenous governments, health care providers, non-governmental organizations, industry organizations, and community groups including First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities, where relevant.
3. Facilitate and accelerate the mobilization of knowledge generated from avian influenza research into accessible, usable, timely and relevant solutions and interventions for decision-makers and knowledge users across multiple sectors and jurisdictions, including populations with higher risks of avian influenza exposure and impact (such as veterinarians, livestock producers, trappers, hunters, workers in the agricultural or wildlife sectors, First Nations, Inuit and/or Métis populations, and populations in rural and remote settings).

The objectives of this funding opportunity are to:

• Foster collaborations across Eligible research fields and/or disciplines and the phases of the care continuum to strengthen (Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health's) (ICRH's) research community, and prepare funded teams for          interdisciplinary network funding opportunities, to ultimately improve healthcare outcomes.
• Enable researchers to generate preliminary data and/or AI-, computational or digital tools to catalyze future research and innovation, contributing to improving health care aligned with ICRH's mandate.
• Support early career researchers in initiating or participating in interdisciplinary research to build research capacity related to ICRH's mandate.

This Catalyst Funding Opportunity is part of CIHR-ICRH's Reimagine Acute Care initiative, focused on delivering better outcomes for all Canadians through research and evidence-informed decision-making in the research areas defined by ICRH's mandate: the heart; brain (stroke); lung; blood and blood vessels; sleep and critical care.

Conditions within ICRH's mandate represent a significant health challenge in Canada, causing approximately one-third of all deaths and accounting for four of the ten most expensive reasons for hospitalizations. Acute care in the hospital setting accounts for Canada's largest annual health expenditure. Many of these conditions, such as heart failure, asthma, and high blood pressure, are Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions where hospitalization may be avoided if managed with timely pre-acute care interventions. Late arrival to hospital care leads to complications, longer stays, and chronic disease development. Importantly, acute care access and outcomes are also largely influenced by social and economic factors. Therefore, certain groups like low income, rural and remote, racialized, immigrant and Indigenous populations experience additional barriers to optimal outcomes. Taken together, these observations highlight the need for a more integrated research approach to prevent or improve acute care outcomes.

• Innovations in Cost-Disruptive Tools for Diagnosis and Screening: This request for proposals (RFP) seeks cost-disruptive devices and diagnostics that cost less than US$1 per test or person, that can stand up to the real-world constraints of frontline public health, and that provide rapid, reliable results.
• Novel Interventions Targeting Placental and Gut Inflammation to Improve Fetal Growth: There are currently no scalable, effective therapies that directly prevent or reverse fetal growth restriction, which affects more than 20 million infants annually. This RFP is designed to accelerate the discovery and development of interventions targeting maternal gut–placenta inflammatory axes and oxidative stress to improve fetal growth outcomes.
• Addressing Physiological Barriers to Micronutrient Absorption from Fortified Foods: This RFP seeks innovative approaches to overcome the biological constraints that limit people's ability to absorb micronutrients in fortified foods in high-burden settings, such as chronic inflammation and gut barrier dysfunction.
• Cost-Disrupting Innovations to Reduce the Cost of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food: With increasingly constrained resources to address Severe Acute Malnutrition, this RFP seeks innovative approaches that will reduce the cost of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTF) in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia by at least 30%.
• Breakthrough Innovations to Significantly Reduce the Cost of Severe Acute Malnutrition Treatment: This RFP seeks transformative, system-level innovations that can substantially increase the number of children treated per dollar spent by reducing the total cost per child treated—without changing the ex-factory price of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTF) or substituting RUTF with an alternative product.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Accelerate Charitable Giving: This RFP seeks ideas that use AI to connect potential donors (from everyday givers to established foundations) to the causes they care about and make it easier for them to contribute.

Applications for all RFPs are due no later than April 28, 2026, at 11:30 AM Pacific Daylight Time.

We will host a dedicated webinar on each RFP to provide more details and answer your questions. Please check the challenge page of the RFP you are interested in for exact dates and times. The webinars will be recorded and available for viewing after the session.

Apply for funding for services or research supporting mental health in first responders and emergency workers.

Alberta’s firefighters, police officers, paramedics, sheriffs, corrections officers and emergency workers often deal with stressful, dangerous and traumatic situations. This stress has a negative impact on first responders and emergency workers. They experience post-traumatic stress injuries (PTSI) at significantly higher rates than the general population.

For this program’s purposes, “emergency workers” are those who encounter serious, unexpected and often dangerous situations requiring immediate action as part of their jobs.

The Supporting Psychological Health in First Responders (SPHIFR) grant program has 2 separate funding streams:

• Stream 1 (Services) provides funding for non-profit organizations that provide services that support first responders and emergency workers living with or at risk for PTSI.
• Stream 2 (Applied research) provides funding to researchers engaged in applied research that generates evidence on prevention or intervention for first responders and emergency workers living with or at risk for PTSI.

This funding opportunity supports implementation research focused on strategies leveraging opportunities provided by settings and sectors beyond the health system in LMICs and/or underserved populations, including Indigenous populations, in HICs.

The projects funded under this call will collectively:

• contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3.4 to reduce premature mortality from NCDs by one third by 2030;
• address implementation of strategies across sectors that will:
  • provide evidence and recommendations to national programmes and policies; aiming to inform policy and practice to address the growing burden of NCDs.
  • expand accessibility of programmes addressing NCDs.
  • promote the early prevention, risk reduction, and timely diagnosis of NCDs.
  • ensure continuity of care for NCDs, from prevention and screening to management in the community.
  • promote improved health outcomes in underserved populations, and low-and middle-income countries.
  • improve quality of life across the life course and extend healthy life expectancy.
  • improve local capacity for implementation research, data collection and harmonisation, and stakeholder engagement for strategies leveraging sectors beyond the health system to tackle non-communicable diseases.

While the focus is on settings outside of the healthcare system, collaboration with the relevant healthcare system(s) as part of the project is expected to facilitate effective design and knowledge mobilization.

The Forest Sector Investment and Innovation Program (FSIIP) provides funding for strategic investments in the forest sector that:

• improve productivity and innovation
• enhance competitiveness
• support new market access
• provide benefits to Ontario’s broader forest sector
• strengthen regional economies

Support is available under two project categories – business projects and collaboration projects.

Award for Excellence in Community Campus Research Partnership 2026

The CBRCanada Community Research Excellence Awards are intended to recognize the achievements of a promising community-based research partnership and signify the importance of community-based research as a growing field of practice. The Award for Excellence in Community-Campus Research Partnership honours the exemplary contributions of a community-campus research partnership that has demonstrated excellence in community-based research. Research partnerships applying for the award should demonstrate excellence in research process (e.g., driven by community with meaningful participation of research partners); research quality (e.g., meaningful, innovative data collection and analysis), and research impact (e.g., community issues addressed by research informed evidence). Research partnerships applying for the award should exemplify an authentic and reciprocal relationship among community and academic partners.

Award for Emerging Community-Based Researcher 2026

The CBRCanada Community Research Excellence Awards are intended to recognize the achievements of a promising community-based researcher and signify the importance of community-based research as a growing field of practice. The Award for Emerging Community-Based Researcher recognizes and celebrates an individual who embodies community-based research values in their work. Nominees for this award should be working closely with a community(ies) in support of transformational community-driven, participatory, and action-oriented research that imagines and builds innovative solutions that address community needs. They are deeply committed to social justice, the issue and/or community(ies) in which they work, and have a drive toward turning research into short and long-term actions to pressing societal issues.

If you are interested in being nominated for one of these awards, please contact the Office of Research Services (ahacquo1@lakeheadu.ca) to indicate your interest by March 27, 2026.

The HFSP fellowship program supports proposals for frontier, potentially transformative research in the life sciences. Applications for high-risk projects are particularly encouraged. The projects should be interdisciplinary in nature and should challenge existing paradigms by using novel approaches and techniques. Scientifically, they should address an important problem or a barrier to progress in the field.

HFSP postdoctoral fellowships encourage early career scientists to broaden their research skills by moving into new areas of study while working in a new country.

Two different fellowships are available:

• Long-Term Fellowships (LTF) are for applicants with a PhD on a biological topic who want to embark on a novel and frontier project focussing on the life sciences.

• Cross-Disciplinary Fellowships (CDF) are for applicants who hold a doctoral degree from a non-biological discipline (e.g. physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering or computer sciences) and who have no (or little) experience in the life sciences.

Brain Canada is excited to support the Alzheimer’s Association on the Alzheimer’s Association Health Services Research in Alzheimer’s disease and Related Disorders (HSR-ADRD) Program. 

The HSR-ADRD program is aimed at advancing health services research that ensures high-quality, equitable, and person-centered brain health and dementia care along the healthcare continuum, across communities and settings. 

This program seeks proposals that utilize rigorous methodologies to advance understanding and improvement of cognitive impairment, including mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD) detection, diagnosis, and post-diagnostic care.   

 This award is structured as an individual research grant, with funding administered through the recipient’s institution. Proposals should address one or more Areas of Focus. Areas of Focus represent high-priority research topics for which this program is actively seeking proposals and include:   

• The Value of Early Detection and Diagnosis: Studies should investigate outcomes associated with early detection and diagnosis on at least two levels of the dementia care ecosystem (i.e., individual/families, providers/clinicians, health systems/payers, and policy/society).  

• Care Pathways for Individuals with MCI or Dementia: Studies should consider comorbidities and investigate how people are being screened and diagnosed in different settings, and the post-diagnosis pathways for care and treatment, including pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions or combinations thereof.  

The Alzheimer's Association and Brain Canada Foundation are pleased to consider partnership for successful Canadian-led applications.  

Click here to view the request for applications