Internal Support for Applicants Applying to CIHR Project Grants

Updated 15-May-2025

UW CIHR External Review (UCER) Program

The Office of Research will arrange and cover the cost of up to three external reviews of any University of À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ-led CIHR Project Grant applications who meet all program deadlines outlined below.

This is an excellent opportunity to receive important feedback from experts in your field to ensure the competitiveness of the application. We strongly encourage Project Grant applicants to take advantage of this resource.

Eligibility

To be eligible, the Nominated Principal Applicant must

  • be tenured or tenure-track, full-time À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ faculty, or hold a definite term research professor appointment, where the primary affiliation is with University of À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ.
  • be an Independent Researcher as .
  • be willing to commit to (re)submitting to CIHR within 2 years of participating in the UCER program.
  • meet all program deadlines. Failure to meet any of the program deadlines will result in the application being removed from this round of external review.
  • Participants in the new Acceleration program are not eligible for the UCER program.

Process

  • ~2.5 months before CIHR application deadline - NPA emails the name, email, and phone number of between 3-5 suggested reviewers (do NOT suggest any that will be included in the application).
  • ~2 months before CIHR application deadline - NPA submits application package for external review.
    • This should be a fulsome application package with as many of the final components as possible (e.g. summary, lay summary, summary of progress, proposal, CV)
  • ~1 month before CIHR application deadline - External reviewer deadline to provide their feedback.

Anticipated Program Deadlines

For NPAs submitting to the Fall 2025 CIHR Project Grant competition

  • June 25, 2025 - NPA emails the name, email, and phone number of between 3-5 suggested reviewers (do NOT suggest any that will be included in the application).
  • July 9, 2025 - NPA submits the application package for external review.
  • August 5, 2025 - External reviewer deadline to provide their feedback.
  • September 4, 2025 by 9am - NPA submits full application by internal deadline

UW CIHR Top Applicant Acceleration Program - Pilot

The Acceleration Program is a by-invitation pilot where an expert panel will provide in-person scientific merit review to top applicants who were unsuccessful in a CIHR Project Grant competition. The purpose of the program is to further enhance the quality of unsuccessful but well-rated proposals and prepare them for resubmission to the CIHR Project Grant scheme in a following round.

Review panels will consist of three to seven members with differing expertise to ensure critical components/aspects of proposals are well covered. This includes scientific/technical merits and fit to the research pillar. It may also include panelists with expertise in areas including, but not limited to:

  • Knowledge mobilization/translation
  • Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Research Practice
  • Sex and Gender Based Analysis
  • Indigenous Research.

Eligibility

This is a by-invitation only program. To be considered for the Acceleration Program:

  • The original CIHR Project Grant application must be rated 4.0 or higher and the percent rank within the committee must be 50% or higher*
  • Acceleration participants must be willing to wait for the panel session before resubmitting to CIHR. Given the short turnaround between receiving a Notice of Decision and the next competition deadline, this inevitably means the unsuccessful applicants to a Spring Project Grant competition would not resubmit until the following Spring and unsuccessful applications to a Fall competition would not resubmit until the following Fall.
  • Acceleration participants must be willing to provide a copy of the draft application for the panelists to review in advance of the session.
  • Acceleration participants must be willing to commit to resubmitting to CIHR within two CIHR Project grant cycles of participating in the Acceleration program.

*Depending on the number of selected applications, the cutoff may vary.

Selection process

Decisions on selection will be made by the Associate Vice President, Health Initiatives on the recommendation of the Director and the Senior Manager, Funding Agencies and Non-Profit Sponsors (FANS). Potential participants will be approached directly.