2026 Canada Impact+ Research Training Awards

Eligibility

Nominator eligibility

• Faculty members wishing to nominate a trainee ("nominators") must hold an active grant awarded under one of the eligible Tri-Agency funding opportunities listed on the CIRTA website (see Question 17).
• For the purposes of this initiative, faculty members must be the primary grant holder (Nominated Principal Applicant/Investigator or Principal Investigator) on an eligible funding opportunity.
• For the purposes of this initiative, eligible active grants are those that received a payment or have a planned payment in the 2025-26 or 2026–27 fiscal year (April 1, 2025, to March 31, 2027).
• Faculty members nominating either a doctoral or postdoctoral nominee must hold Supervisory Privileges as defined by the UCalgary Graduate Student Supervision Policy.

Review full Nominator eligibility on the CIRTA website.

Nominee eligibility

• Nominees can be of any citizenship, including Canadian citizens, permanent residents and protected people. Nominees cannot have a current affiliation with a Canadian institution and must be currently studying or working abroad.
• For the doctoral award: Nominees must be eligible to enroll in a doctoral program at the nominating institution in Canada as of the award activation date.
• For the postdoctoral award: Nominees must be qualified to undertake postdoctoral research at the nominating institution in Canada as of the award activation date.
• Participation of Canadian citizens in this program is intended for those who have previously left Canada for research and/or work experience who wish to return to Canada to continue their research.
• Nominations can be submitted for an individual who has already received an offer of admission to the doctoral program or an offer of employment as a postdoctoral scholar. However, the nominee must not have commenced their doctoral studies or postdoctoral appointment as of the nomination deadline of March 4, 2026.
• Unlike the existing limiting eligibility windows in the CGRS D (must be within 36 months of starting the doctoral program) and CPRA programs (must be within 3 years of completing the doctoral degree), the Canada Impact+ Research Training Awards do not have any windows of time that would limit eligibility. Similarly, for postdoctoral nominees, UCalgary’s standard eligibility window of 7 years after completing the doctoral degree (or equivalent) does not apply.
• Holders of a health professional or allied health professional degree are eligible to be nominated for a postdoctoral award. Health professional/allied health professional degree holders pursuing a PhD are eligible to be nominated for a doctoral award.
• Nominees' research program must fall within one or more of the eight strategic priority areas. Priority areas are intended to be interpreted broadly so that relevant work from a wide range of disciplines, from across the three agencies, may be considered.

Review the full Nominee eligibility on the CIRTA website. 

Summary

The federal government has announced a new initiative to attract top international research trainee talent, called the Canada Impact+ Research Training Awards (CIRTA). This one-time program is jointly administered by CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC, and provides funding to recruit 600 doctoral students and 400 postdoctoral researchers to Canada. 

UCalgary has received an allocation to recruit 19 doctoral and 11 postdoctoral trainees on an accelerated timeline. UCalgary leadership has launched an internal selection process to identify the 30 faculty members who will be invited to nominate trainees for these positions.  

This is a time-sensitive process and interested faculty members must be prepared to move rapidly to participate in this program. Please read the program details below closely before proceeding with the application process.

Internal selection process

In order to distribute UCalgary’s allocated doctoral and postdoctoral nominations, the VPR Office has established a competitive selection process, which will be adjudicated by a committee comprised of senior leaders from the VPR Office and Faculty of Graduate Studies.

Nomination Limit

A faculty member may submit up to one (1) doctoral student nomination and one (1) postdoctoral scholar nomination (up to two (2) nominations in total), although it is very unlikely for a single faculty member to receive more than one (1) nomination.

Submission of Expression of Interest (EOI)

Nominating faculty members must complete and submit an internal expression of interest (EOI) for each nominee, in advance of the internal deadline. Nominators and nominees should review the detailed eligibility requirements for this program and the preview of the internal EOI form prior to beginning an expression of interest.

• Preview the EOI form

Administrative and Research Security Review

RSO and Faculty of Graduate Studies will review all nominations for eligibility and completeness.

Nominations recommended by the selection committee will be reviewed by the RSO Research Security team to identify affiliations of concern and other research security risks that should be mitigated prior to acceptance of a CIRTA award.

Selection criteria

Nominations will be adjudicated on four criteria

1. quality of the training environment;
2. supervisory track record;
3. demonstrated and potential research excellence of the candidate, and;
4. alignment of the application with CIRTA and UCalgary research priorities.

Application deadlines

Program application deadline

Notice of Results

Nominators and nominees will be notified of the result of the internal selection process in the week of February 9. Those selected to proceed to a final nomination will be provided instructions for completing the full nomination package in advance of the Tri-Agency deadline.

• Download PDF of Expression of Interest

• Submit Expression of Interest

   

Full nomination package

Details on the contents and format of the full nomination package will be provided to selected nominators and nominees once they are made available by the Tri-Agency. Full nominations must be submitted to the Postdoc Office and Faculty of Graduate Studies by February 27.

For Narrative CV support, visit this webpage

For the Graduate Student Supervision Policy, download this document

For further information, visit this webpage

Contact Details

• For doctoral awards, contact gsawards@ucalgary.ca
• For postdoctoral awards, contact fellowships@ucalgary.ca