U of T gains 10 new Canada Research Chairs in reallocation

U of T’s allocation of Canada Research Chairs has risen by 10 chairs, thanks to collaborative efforts by the Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation (VPRI), academic divisions, partner hospitals and researchers over recent years to increase the performance in research granting competitions that guide the allocation formula.

“This is excellent news for the University of Toronto,” said U of T President David Naylor. “It is an institutional success story, with everyone sharing the accolades: from the Principal Investigators to their Deans, colleagues, and students; and from research staff in the divisions to the central Research Services Office under Professor Paul Young’s leadership.”

Launched in 2000, the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program created 2,000 research chairs as part of a national strategy to make Canada one of the world’s top countries in research and development. The CRC program reallocates these chairs every two years, dividing them among universities nationwide based on their performance in designated research programs of Canada’s three federal research granting bodies—the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. In other words, the more successful a university is in securing research funding, the higher its allocation of CRCs.

When the CRC program launched in 2000, the university was allocated 271 chairs. That number began dropping in 2006 and reached a low of 238 in 2011. In 2008, a university-wide strategy was developed to regain the lost chairs based on analyses of the institution’s performance by the VPRI. Because the reallocation is based on a three year rolling average of each institution’s performance, the results of that strategy are only now being reflected in the reallocation with the number of chairs rising to 248.

(U of T leads the nation number of Canada Research Chairs. A recent reallocation increased the number of CRCs to 248.)

“We are seeing the fruits now of our plan to regain lost market share,” says Professor Paul Young, U of T’s Vice-President, Research and Innovation, who stresses that the collaborative nature of the effort was essential to its success. “This is a credit to leaders in academic divisions across the university, to our hospital partners, and to hundreds of individual researchers. Everyone worked together to improve the institution’s success in those critical tri-council funding competitions.”

The CRC program has helped the university attract and retain the world’s most promising researchers, says Young. “The program has been essential in enabling the University of Toronto to compete on the international stage and in consolidating our reputation as a global research leader.

“But the impact goes beyond that. Our chairholders are investigating everything from the genetics of cancer to homelessness. The CRC program has had a tangible impact on society because it’s making possible inquiry into society’s most urgent and pressing problems.”

The 10 new chairs will be allocated across the university’s academic divisions and filled as quickly as possible in accordance with research priorities of the divisions and the university’s strategic research plan.