Interaction Grants Program

Overview
Value	Up to $5,000 for up to three months
Application Deadline	No deadline
How to Apply	See below
Application Form	Form 401 Form 100 (Apply on-line)
Program Contacts	Contact the NSERC regional office in your area.

Objectives

The Interaction Grants (IG) Program is intended to give companies that operate from a Canadian base and researchers from Canadian universities (see the List of Eligible Institutions) an opportunity to meet and identify a company-specific problem they could solve by collaborating in a subsequent research partnership. These interactions are expected to result in economic benefits to Canada.

If contact with a company has already been established and a specific problem has been identified, the candidate may be eligible to apply directly for other research partnership grants, including the Engage Grants Program.

Description

The IG Program provides up to $5,000 over three months to support expenses associated with travel and meetings in order to allow academic researchers to establish contact with one or several companies. IG grants enable researchers and their industrial partners to identify potential research projects.

Applicants must clearly spell out the objectives of the intended meeting(s) and explain how the targeted partners are relevant to the applicant’s expertise, as well as the likeliness and the potential nature of the envisioned future research collaboration. A detailed expense budget is requested. Occasionally, travel expenses for University-Industry Liaison Office staff or for an SME company representative may be eligible to facilitate the process. Please refer to the guidelines for the use of grant funds.

Industrial Participation

As the purpose of the Interaction Grant is to foster new relationships between companies and academic researchers, there can be no existing or past relationship between the parties, including a previous research collaboration, consulting contract or involvement on the part of the academic researcher in the company.

The companies must operate from a Canadian base and demonstrate clear intentions to further develop and apply any technology that will be at the core of a subsequent research collaboration with the applicant.

Application Procedures

Proposals can be submitted at any time using an NSERC Interaction Grants Program Application Form (Form 401). Once completed, the application form must be forwarded to the NSERC Regional Office in your area by e-mail or through regular mail. Please attach your Personal Data Form (Form 100). If you are not a registered user of the on-line services, please download the PDF file, or register and create your Form 100 on-line.

Funding decisions for Interaction Grants are usually made within three weeks of receiving a complete application.

Selection Criteria

Applications are evaluated on the following criteria:

• Incrementality: The proposal must aim to create a new relationship with a company with which the applicant has no present or past involvement.
• Research competence: The applicant must be an NSERC-eligible academic researcher and must have held a research grant from a recognized federal or provincial granting agency within the past six years.
• Industrial relevance: The proposal must identify one or more potential partner companies which are in a domain that is relevant to the applicant’s expertise and which could benefit by the application of that expertise to address a company-specific problem.

Reporting

Interaction Grants are monitored by the NSERC regional offices. Grantees must provide an activity report to their relevant NSERC regional office no later than one month past the end of the grant. The report must detail the outcome of the contacts established with companies, as well as any plan for future collaboration.

Grantees must provide a statement of actual expenditures incurred and any unspent balance must be transferred to the General Research Account at the host institution.

Contacts

NSERC Regional Offices
Contact the NSERC regional office in your area.

NSERC
Tel.: 613-995-1111
E-mail: rpp@nserc-crsng.gc.ca