How the Trump administration’s cuts to U.S. science are derailing Canadian research. In early spring this year Aaron Fisk and his colleagues were preparing for their usual field season, planning to deploy bright yellow autonomous gliders in the Western Basin of Lake Erie. The goal was to study what happens as the lake transitions from […]
funding
Canada’s new budget aims to lure U.S. researchers to relocate
Spending plan also calls for smaller research spending cut than feared. Canada has joined a growing list of countries looking to take advantage of the turmoil in the U.S. scientific community and lure high-level researchers to its universities. The government’s 2025 budget, released yesterday, includes CA$1.7 billion ($1.2 billion) for a suite of measures aimed […]
US National Institutes of Health has become a political target—how did we get here?
One of the most admired research agencies in the world, the US National Institutes of Health, now has a huge target on its back. How did an organisation supported by both Democrat and Republican politicians become so vulnerable? The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has long been the gold standard for biomedical research around […]
Who is reviewing the reviewers?
The CIHR Review Quality Assurance process reveals vast majority of grant reviewers are doing a good job. One-third of peer reviewers for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) submitted outstanding reviews, while no more than one in 20 did not perform adequately, according to an analysis of the first three years of the funder’s […]
Canadian PhD students and postgrads plan mass walkout over low pay
Academics are demanding a significant boost to government-sponsored fellowships and scholarships, which haven’t changed for decades. Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers at dozens of universities and research institutions across Canada are planning to walk out on 1 May in protest at government-funded salaries that have remained flat since 2003. Read more in Nature.
Brexit deal paves way for UK to rejoin Horizon Europe research programme
UK scientists had been shut out of the multibillion-euro scheme amid drawn-out Brexit negotiations. UK researchers are optimistic that they will soon regain access to the European Union’s flagship Horizon Europe funding programme, after the United Kingdom and the EU reached an agreement on the status of Northern Ireland after Brexit. For the past two […]
Will UK science’s ‘lost’ £1.6 billion ever come back?
Negotiations on Horizon Europe dragged on — and UK-based researchers came up short. The UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is quietly returning £1.6 billion (US$1.9 billion) in funding to the Treasury that had been earmarked for research collaborations with the European Union in its 2022–23 budget. But the government swears that the […]
In Canada, scientists are struggling with stagnant funding
Lackluster growth in federal spending squeezes research community Earlier this month, researchers attending Canada’s major annual science policy conference here got some seemingly good news when science minister François-Philippe Champagne announced the government would be awarding CA$1 billion to research projects. But disappointment soon set in. The $1 billion, scientists realized, was existing, not new, […]
Emergency COVID-19 grants need careful follow-up
Building on the research that was done may help prepare for future pandemics. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research and its partners have so far handed out more than 550 grants worth over $250 million for research related to COVID-19. Some will undoubtedly lead to significant breakthroughs that will help us deal with this pandemic […]
Was COVID-19 research funding well spent?
Some academics argue it should have been part of regular funding programs, or more focused. A full month before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic in March 2020, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research launched a $55 million emergency funding competition to help the scientific community learn all it could about the […]