$1.2B
Across three campuses and nine partner hospitals
15.5%
Of the country's Tri-Agency funding
Addressing the world’s most pressing issues
U of T is helping to generate the knowledge and tools necessary to tackle the world’s most pressing issues.
Every year, U of T researchers and innovators are successful in securing funds from a rich diversity of sources including the federal and provincial governments, the not-for-profit sector, private-sector partnerships, and national and international research and philanthropic foundations.
Our funding success gives our researchers, trainees, and partners access to some of the most advanced research tools in the world, making it possible to provide superior training opportunities and to attract and retain the best research minds from around the world.
The University of Toronto became home to one of five new patient-focused research networks announced in 2016 by the Federal Minister of Health. The networks, part of Canada’s Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR), will receive a total of $62 million over five years from the Government of Canada through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and an additional $126 million from various partners.
The SPOR Network in Diabetes and Related Complications will be co-led by Professor Gary Lewis, Director of the Banting & Best Diabetes Centre at the University of Toronto and a Senior Scientist with the University Health Network, and Professor Jean-Pierre Després of l'Université Laval. The network will be based in Toronto at the University Health Network and University of Toronto. The other partner organizations are l’Université de Sherbrooke, l’Université de Montréal, the University of Alberta, the University of British Columbia, the University of Manitoba and the University of New Brunswick.
Ten University of Toronto researchers have been awarded Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Strategic Partnership Grants. The grants – the largest number awarded to any Canadian university – totalled almost $5 million. Six of the recipients were from the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, two from the Faculty of Arts & Science, and one each from the Faculty of Information and from University of Toronto Mississauga.
In 2016, the Government of Canada -- through the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund – awarded U of T researchers $5.2 million in funding to conduct cutting-edge research. The John R. Evans Leaders Fund is designed to help universities attract and retain the best and brightest researchers from around the world by giving them access to state-of-the-art research tools.
At U of T, the funding will support research on various important topics such as preventing falls in vulnerable populations, improving breast cancer survival rates and improving acoustical architecture. “Every day, our researchers are engaged in an outstanding array of research aimed at tackling real-world challenges that have the potential to benefit all of us. This funding will ensure that work can continue at the highest level,” said Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation.
In 2016, 20 research teams received funding worth a total of $27 million over three years through Medicine by Design, the central co-ordination point for regenerative medicine efforts by researchers at U of T and its affiliated hospitals.
This first investment in collaborative team projects touches more than 75 researchers and clinicians from diverse disciplines. Projects include research into fundamental questions in regenerative medicine; innovations that are expected to be ready for clinical trials within a few years; and enabling technologies that have the potential to accelerate discoveries across the field. Only Medicine by Design can support the number and types of projects that will build a robust regenerative medicine pipeline from research to clinical translation to commercialization, moving discoveries more quickly from the lab bench to the bedside.
Federal Funding
U of T continues to lead Canadian universities in securing funding through competitive and peer-reviewed federal government sources. U of T obtained more than 15 per cent of Tri-Agency (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research) funding – $369 million in 2015-16 or approximately one-third of our total sponsored research funding. This funding is doubly crucial because it also serves as the primary driver for allocating other federal research investments including the Canada Research Chairs, the Research Support Fund and a portion of the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) funding.
U of T and its partner hospitals continue to lead in CFI awards, earning more than 13 per cent of funds awarded in the years encompassing the two most recent Innovation Fund competitions. Since the agency’s inception, U of T has leveraged more than $2 billion in research infrastructure funding from CFI and collaborating agencies such as Ontario’s Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science. This funding supports the most advanced research tools and facilities in the world. It provides superior opportunities for research trainees and helps U of T attract and retain world-class research leaders.
Provincial Funding
Programs offered by the Province of Ontario are vital to the success of research in this province. In particular, the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science provides millions of dollars annually to support the purchase of research equipment; research operating costs; and new researchers as they build their teams and mentor the next generation of researchers. In 2015-16, the Province provided $83 million in funding to U of T investigators.
Private Sector Funding
U of T leads Canadian universities in private-sector research funding, securing $117 million for use in 2015-16. Industrial partnerships are vital to enabling U of T researchers to push the boundaries of knowledge. In turn, innovations developed by U of T researchers provide industrial partners—especially small- to medium-sized enterprises—with access to new technologies and expertise that would otherwise be beyond their reach.
Connaught Awards
In 2016, U of T’s Connaught Fund, the largest internal university research funding program in Canada, relaunched its prestigious Connaught Global Challenge Award. This funding boost will help new research programs get off the ground and find major new external funding to solve global challenges, forge important new partnerships with other internationally renowned universities and government agencies, as well as possibly create new research-oriented academic programs.
The Connaught Fund was created in 1972 from the sale of Connaught Medical Research Laboratories, which were the first to mass-produce insulin, the Nobel Prize-winning discovery by U of T researchers Frederick Banting, Charles Best, J.J.R. Macleod and James Bertram Collip. The University serves as the steward of the Fund and has awarded more than $155 million to U of T researchers to date.
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