Innovation Grant Program

This grant competition offers operating funds for research investigations that lead to improved health outcomes for women and/or children. All applications are peer-reviewed by either the Biomedical Grant Advisory Committees or the Applied Health Grant Advisory Committee. Applications submitted to this grant competition may be either stand-alone projects or projects that provide pilot data for future applications to provincial and/or national agencies. Funding of up to $60,000 is available for a two-year period.

Eligibility

All applications to WCHRI must align with our relevance criteria in order to be eligible for funding. Eligibility criteria is as follows:

• The principal investigator must hold a full-time academic or clinical faculty appointment at the University of Alberta.
• The principal investigator must be a WCHRI academic member for not less than one year prior to application, except new recruits with an academic appointment of less than one year at time of application deadline. 
• Each principal investigator may submit one application (maximum).
• Principal investigators that currently hold program funding may re-apply to the WCHRI Innovation grant program no earlier than year two of their current grant funding. 

Program eligibility is established upon submission of the completed application access request and application forms.

Innovation Grant Program call for applications

In order to access the application form and support program requirements, the following applies:

• The principal investigator is required to submit the WCHRI Innovation Grant access request form.
• WCHRI will send the application form link to the principal investigator (in one business day) after all access form requirements have been met. This form link is unique to each principal investigator.
• The WCHRI Innovation Grant Co-investigator Biosketch Form must be completed by each co-investigator and sent by the co-investigator to the principal investigator. The principal investigator must upload the completed WCHRI Innovation Grant Co-investigator Biosketch Form into the application form. 
• Each collaborator must provide a letter of collaboration directly to the principal investigator. The principal investigator must upload each letter (of collaboration) into the application form.

WCHRI will not accept biosketch forms or letters of collaboration directly from research team members. 

Submitted information is final and not subject to amendment.
Late submissions and/or supplemental information is not accepted. 

Application and deadlines

The application is a two-step process:

1. 1. Application access form
      • Access to the application will be provided based on the submission of the application access request form.
      • The complete access request form must be submitted by the deadline.
      • The deadline for submission is April 21, 2023, at 4 p.m.
   2. Application form
      • The complete application form (including letter(s) of collaboration and co-investigator biosketch(es), as relevant) must be submitted by the deadline.

• The deadline for submission is May 19, 2023, at 4 p.m.

A complete, current listing of all funding programs and deadlines is available on the WCHRI Research Grants page.

Grant Information Session

WCHRI will hold a Grant Information Session on April 14, 2023 from noon to 1:30 p.m. to support members interested in applying for this opportunity. 

Access the application form

Complete the WCHRI 2023 Innovation Grant application access request form

Program reference material (including biosketch form access)

• WCHRI 2023 Innovation Grant Program guidelines
• WCHRI Innovation Grant Co-investigator Biosketch Form

Competition results

Please refer to the grants landing page for competition outcome timelines.
Feedback is provided one week after the outcome posting is available. 

View the 2022 Innovation Grant competition results or refer to our past competition results.

For further information

WCHRI Academic members that require clarification are asked to refer to the program information (including guidelines) and then refer questions to WCHRI grants.