CanLyme Venture Grants Policy

This policy is out of date. Please reference our newest Venture Grants policy.

POSTED NOVEMBER 16, 2013 BY CANLYME

UPDATED January, 2022

The Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation Venture Grants Program supports research on Lyme and associated tick-borne diseases. The Foundation’s goal is to increase knowledge and understanding of borrelioses in Canada, and to support high quality research that informs Canadian public health policy. Our primary focus is research that has potential application to human illness. Researchers from Canadian universities are particularly encouraged to apply. Non-citizens of Canada are eligible to receive grant support from this program, but the research has to be carried out at a Canadian Institution.

Funds may be used to pay for direct costs of research, such as student stipends, lab consumables and minor equipment. Overhead or indirect costs are not eligible for Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation funds. Successful applicants are required to submit annual reports for the duration of the funding, and are requested to submit a digital photo related to the research for posting on the Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation website. Financial support by the Foundation should be acknowledged in resulting publications.

The maximum annual amount that will be awarded as a student stipend is $10,000, renewable on application for extension for up to a total of two years for an MSc student, postdoc or other researcher, and up to three years for a PhD student, contingent on adequate progress as determined by both the researcher’s supervisory committee and the Board of the Foundation.

Grants are awarded once per year, normally in March.

Grants shall be assessed on the scientific quality of the research proposal, the probability that it will lead to peer-reviewed scientific publications, the appropriateness of the proposed budget and the academic standing and research capability of the applicant. Applications shall be forwarded to two to three reviewers external to the Board of the Foundation, and final decisions on awards will be by majority vote of the Board of the Foundation.

Venture Grants are of two forms: (1) Partial stipends for students and post-docs for studies at an accredited Canadian university and (2) financial support for research expenses.

Application Instructions

General instructions are presented immediately below, but we would appreciate receiving a letter of intent (LOI) initially. The LOI is intended to inform us whether the goals of the proposed research project correspond adequately to the overall goals of the Venture Grant program. On acceptance of the LOI, the application forms will be emailed. See the following for further information.

Submission of a statement of goals, literature review, methods to be used, and anticipated results. An appraisal of potential challenges, with a description of alternate approaches that could be used as problems arise, is highly recommended. The application should include a detailed budget and a timeline for proposed activities, and include information on other sources of funding for the project, received or applied for. The Foundation will release CanLyme grants policy funds only once co-funding has been secured. Applications should also include an academic CV for the researcher(s), including brief annotations giving the relevance of prior publications. The application should consist of a cover page, a description of the proposal (two pages maximum), a CV (five pages maximum), and up to two pages detailing the sources of co-funding.

Researchers using animal or human subjects must adhere to guidelines for animal care and ethics approval of their institution. If ethics approval is required for the study, a letter of approval from the institution’s ethics board must be secured before the Foundation will release its funds.

Please send an LOI or a request for further information to:

Reuben Kaufman

E-mail: rkaufman [at] ualberta [dot] ca

Personal Web Address:

https://www.biology.ualberta.ca/faculty/reuben_kaufman/index.php