Researchers attract $9.3 million in federal grants

UVic researchers have performed strongly in this year’s competitions for research grant funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), receiving new awards totalling $9.3 million.

“These results confirm the quality of the research and researchers at UVic as judged by national peer review in these highly competitive federal granting programs,” says UVic vice president research Dr. Martin Taylor.

In the NSERC competition results announced May 24, UVic’s scientists and engineers have been awarded nearly $8 million. This total includes $7 million awarded in the research grant program and $885,000 in separate funding programs for research equipment, collaborative research initiatives and projects in subatomic and particle physics.

The research grant program funding will support new projects over the next five years and is in addition to funding for multi-year UVic projects approved by NSERC in previous annual competitions. The success rate for UVic applications in the research grants program was an outstanding 91.5 per cent.

In the SSHRC grant competitions announced in April, UVic researchers in the social sciences and humanities were awarded $1.3 million to support 15 new projects over the next three years.