CIHR Project Grant

Overview of the CIHR Project Grant program:

The CIHR Project Grant: Spring 2025 competition is an initiative of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) that supports original and innovative health research projects across all disciplines relevant to CIHR’s mandate. This program is designed to capture ideas with the greatest potential to improve health, healthcare systems, and services in Canada and globally. The grant supports projects at any stage, from discovery to application, providing the means to generate or apply new knowledge. CIHR seeks to fund proposals that demonstrate high scientific merit, relevance to health, and clear potential for impact. The program encourages both established and early-career investigators to apply, with special provisions for early-career researchers, including a dedicated budget envelope. Peer review is conducted by expert committees to ensure excellence and fairness, with evaluation criteria focusing on the quality of the idea, research approach, expertise of the team, and potential impact of the results. Applicants may submit projects of various scopes and durations, allowing flexibility to match their specific research needs. Co-applicants and collaborators can include knowledge users, decision-makers, and other partners. The program emphasizes collaborative, interdisciplinary research and supports a wide range of topics, including biomedical, clinical, health services, and population health research.

Benefits of the CIHR Project Grant program:

• Access to significant, flexible funding to support health research.
• Dedicated funding envelope for early-career researchers to encourage participation.
• Peer-reviewed evaluation by experts in the field ensures funding is awarded to high-quality proposals.
• Flexibility in project scope and duration.
• Funding supports a wide array of health research topics including biomedical, clinical, and population health.
• Opportunity for interdisciplinary and collaborative research, including partnerships with non-academic stakeholders.
• Potential for long-term impact on health outcomes and systems.
• Strengthening of Canadas research capacity and innovation ecosystem.

Eligibility criteria of the CIHR Project Grant program:

• Eligible applicants include:
• Individuals affiliated with eligible Canadian institutions such as universities or hospitals.
• Researchers at any career stage, with early-career researchers benefiting from special funding considerations.
• Projects must be health-related and align with CIHRs mandate.
• The Nominated Principal Applicant must be an independent researcher or, in the case of early-career researchers, must meet CIHRs criteria for new investigators.
• Co-applicants and collaborators can include knowledge users, healthcare providers, and decision-makers, but must also be affiliated with eligible institutions.
• Projects may be at any stage of research (discovery, implementation, evaluation).
• Applicants must be able to manage and administer the funds via a CIHR-eligible institution.