NSERC – National Science Foundation Global Centres

Funder’s website

The funder’s website can be found HERE.

Funding Value and Duration

Track 1: 4-5 years and up to $750k/yr

Track 2: 1-2 years and up to $100k/yr

Overview

This initiative supports researchers from the Canada and the US, and optionally Australia, the UK, and/or other countries as well, in forming collaborative research partnerships to address themes related to climate change and/or clean energy. Global Centres proposals should be focused on cutting-edge, interdisciplinary and use-inspired research on climate change and/or clean energy with international collaborations that foster breakthroughs in knowledge. NSF Global Centres grants will support the creation of international hubs of research excellence that advance knowledge, empower communities, and generate discovery and innovative solutions at a regional, national and global scale.

These international hubs are expected to be driven by a bold vision for high-impact, use-inspired basic research, as well as a strategy to integrate diverse perspectives from different disciplines, international partners and other stakeholders into the research over the course of the project.

While climate change science has traditionally focused on the natural sciences, this initiative recognizes the need to include the social and behavioural sciences and humanities, as these, alongside the natural sciences and engineering fields, provide important contributions in informing the transformation needed by society.

The Global Centres initiative includes two tracks:

• Track 1 – Implementation: Implementation grants support the establishment of a Global Centre and are expected to be four to five years in duration.
• Track 2 – Design: Design grants will support coordination and preliminary research efforts aiming to foster future Global Centre proposals.

Objectives

• Create physical or virtual international research centres that advance innovative, interdisciplinary, use-inspired research and education on climate change and/or clean energy to address societal challenges through international collaboration and multi-stakeholder engagement.
• Promote international collaboration to obtain advantages of scope, scale, flexibility, expertise, facilities and/or access to specific geographic locations, to enable advances that could not occur otherwise.
• Expand opportunities for students and early-career researchers to gain education and training in world-class research while enhancing diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.
• Engage multiple partners and stakeholders through practices such as Team Science, Engaged Scholarship and Knowledge-to-Action frameworks to empower them to solve urgent societal challenges at a regional scale.