Canada Impact+ Research Chairs | Research & Innovation

A new, one-time Canada Impact+ Research Chairs program to support institutions in attracting world-leading researchers whose work addresses critical national and global challenges. The initiative is an opportunity for international researchers to join the dynamic, cutting-edge and world-class research community at York, while heading up an impactful research program that accelerates excellence in research and innovation. The second intake has now launched, with a deadline of April 17, 2026.

Supported through a Canadian government initiative, the program emphasizes both research excellence and tangible impact. Impact+ Chairs will receive long-term funding and institutional support to advance ambitious and transformative projects in Canada’s strategic priority areas, build and maintain exceptional research teams and collaborate with partners across sectors and borders.

Impact+ chairholders are expected to drive the translation of discoveries into applications, commercialization and social and economic benefits for Canada and the world, while also developing the next generation of highly qualified personnel.

The tri-council Institutional Programs Secretariat administers the initiative supported through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

York will work with selected applicants to develop and submit a nomination to the Canada Impact+ Research Chairs competition.

Successful candidates will receive a Chair of either $8 million ($1 million per year) or $4 million ($500,000 per year) over eight years. The two award values recognize the varying costs of research within different research disciplines and aim to be inclusive of all areas of research. There is potential for a four-year extension at 50 per cent of the initial award value per year.

Quick inks

Choose York

York is a top international teaching and research-intensive institution with a proud tradition of interdisciplinary scholarship, discovery and innovation. Located in Toronto, Canada, the University brings together diverse perspectives, fostering a welcoming, globally connected community guided by a strong sense of social responsibility. Situated across three Greater Toronto Area campuses, York is the third largest university in Canada with more than 53,000 students, 7,100 faculty and staff and 385,000 alumni.

for impact towards sustainable development (Times Higher Education Impact Ranking 2025)

Partnerships in 60+ countries

in Canada in 15 QS subject rankings

of global universities (Times Higher Education Impact Ranking 2025)

annual research income and funding

of published articles co-authored with international collaborators (2019-2024)

ventures supported by York's entrepreneurship and innovation hub

New School of Medicine

opening 2028

Research driving global impact

York University is leading bold, interdisciplinary research that has a global impact. Guided by the Strategic Research Plan (2023–28), York accelerates discovery and innovation through initiatives like Connected Minds: Neural and Machine Systems for a Healthy, Just Society, a first-of-its-kind collaboration with more than 50 partners, supported by $318.4 million in funding. As academic lead of the UNITAR Global Water Academy and through the OneWATER research unit, York is advancing equitable solutions to critical water challenges worldwide. With more than 30 Organized Research Units, including the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Society, the Institute for Technoscience and Society, and the Manufacturing Technology Entrepreneurship Centre, York is fostering a uniquely collaborative environment where researchers tackle Canada's and the world’s most pressing issues.

Meet globally engaged research leaders at York

Carys Craig

Carys Craig explores one of today’s most pressing AI debates: how generative technologies are reshaping cultural creation. Her research interrogates the ethics of AI-generated works, including questions of authorship, ownership and and whether these tools represent a new form of technologically enabled plagiarism. Read more

Laleh Seyyed-Kalantari

At the Lassonde School of Engineering, Laleh Seyyed-Kalantari's research, published in the journal Nature Medicine, reveals how bias embedded in AI algorithms can lead to misdiagnoses and inappropriate treatments, disproportionately affecting marginalized and minority populations.
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Godfred Boateng

Godfred Boateng examines how resources, health and sustainable livelihoods intersect with a focus on inequity in health systems, socio-ecological drivers of cardiometabolic conditions in aging adults and the health impacts of COVID-19. His work advances the understanding of the social and structural determinants of health among vulnerable populations. Read more

Amrita Daftary

A leading York researcher in the Faculty of Health, Amrita Daftary is focused on the Global South and collaborates internationally on the study of infectious diseases such as malarai, HIV and tuberculosis. Her research also investigates the far-reaching social and economical impacts of these diseases.
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Mohamed Omar

Mohamed Omar, professor of mathematics and world-renowned scholar, has received national awards for his research, including being the inaugural recipient of the American Mathematical Society's Claytor-Gilmer Fellowship and an inaugural recipient of the Karen EDGE Fellowship, both celebrating mid-career research. Read more

Satinder K. Brar

Satinder K. Brar, a global leader in biotechnology, has developed value-added bioproducts from wastewater and wastewater sludge. Her research focuses on transforming residuals into resources and addressing emerging environmental contaminants through holistic, sustainable treatments used worldwide. Read more

Usman Khan

Usman Khan’s research in water resources engineering focuses on urban hydrology, flood risk assessment, as well as sustainabile water resource management and infrastructure with particular attention to the impact of climae change on these systems. He specializes in developing novel machine learning and AI methods for engineering applications.
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Sapna Sharma

Sapna Sharma investigates how lakes around the world respond to climate change – from rapid ice loss and warming waters to delicing water quality and shifting fish populations. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, was named one of Canada's Top 10 Women Water Scientists and earned the prestigious Ontario Government Early Researcher Award. Read more

Eric Kennedy

Eric Kennedy’s research in the field of disaster and emergency management focuses on: improving decision-making in emergency contexts; strengthening disaster training; and developing more effective policies for prevention and response. His work advances how disasters are studied, managed and evaluated in an increasingly risk-prone world.
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Jack Rozdilsky

Jack Rozdilsky explores how societies prepare for, respond to and recover from natural, technological and social disasters. His work on disaster preparedness, homeland security, crisis communication and emergency management helps public safety systems maintain trust, improve coordination and adapt to complex risk environments.
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Robert Gehl

Ontario Research Chair in Digital Governance for Social Justice, Robert Gehl studies network cultures and technologies, activist-run alternative social media platforms, manipulatie communication and the dark web. His research examines who power, governance and social justice operate within contemporary communication systems.
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Anne Sullivan

Blending game design, storytelling and social justice, Anne Sullivan explores civic engagment, equity and participation. A Connected Minds member, she studies creative AI, human-computer interaction and how interactive experiences and game mechanics can encourage political dialogue, community involvement and youth voting.
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Research alignment

Impact+ Chairs are awarded in strategic priority areas established by the Government of Canada. A core expectation is that Chairs, and their research teams, will actively translate and mobilize research outcomes into practice, policy and commercialization pathways that deliver measurable social and economic benefits for Canada and the world.

Applications must explain how the Chair will advance one or more of the following strategic priority areas:

York University has a robust community of researchers working together on advanced digital technologies. Through the first of its kind interdisciplinary research initiative led by York, Connected Minds: Neural and Machine Systems for a Healthy, Just Society, researchers are, for example, developing ethical applications and models, including the use of next generation AI, to improve patient care, treatment and diagnosis. The Centre for Artificial Intelligence & Society investigates how AI technologies operate in real-world with a focus on AI systems that address societal priorities in health care, smart cities and sustainability. The interdisciplinary research happening at the Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA), spanning visual neuroscience, computer vision, AI, machine learning and beyond to create impact through global collaborations and partnerships. It is positioning Canada as a global leader in vision sciences to drive innovation. York research in AI is developing tools and AI powered assistive technologies for everything from better health care, emergency and disaster management, and healthy aging to robotics in space. Researchers are also developing ways to reduce AI vulnerabilities in large-scale networks while preventing hackers from causing damage to systems. As a leading centre in Cyber Threat Intelligence, researchers in York’s Behaviour-Centric Cybersecurity Center are developing and operationalizing intelligence-driven approaches to proactively detect, analyze and mitigate emerging cyber threats. York also partners with outside organizations and institutions to secure power grids and financial systems – developing end-to-end solutions for critical infrastructure resilience.

York’s expertise in health and biotechnology includes the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research with an emphasis on global population health and policy. Researchers are developing better methods to diagnose, treat and prevent cancer and other diseases, researching mechanisms of inflammation with promising implications on treating autoimmune diseases like arthritis, shaping policy around genomics and treatments for rare diseases and propelling Canada toward a future of personalized medicine. In addition, York's new School of Medicine, the first Canadian medical school to focus on community-based primary health-care education and training Ontario’s future primary-care doctors, will welcome its first cohort in September 2028. Work is also being done to find innovative ways to treat mental health, such as anxiety using virtual reality, creating wearable devices to monitor health for earlier disease detection and intervention, as well as for epilepsy management. These are just a few examples of York’s strength in this area, which also include research in population health, public health preparedness, health governance, health law, bioethics and biotechnology regulation. 

York is a leader in sustainability, climate and environment research, training and teaching. It heads one of seven Smart Mobility Applied Research and Testing-Toronto (SmartTO) regional technology development sites, part of the Ontario Vehicle Innovation Network, designed to empower startups and small- and medium-sized enterprises to develop, test and prototype advanced automotive technologies and smart mobility solutions. Using state-of-the-art equipment, innovative labs and research centres, along with world-renowned expertise. York’s Keele Campus is a Living Lab that allows testing of innovative technology in a real-life context. Research is also happening in the electric vehicle space – York is a vital testing ground for sustainable transportation solutions, including single use electric vehicles – and energy efficiency solutions, such as smart grids, the integration of renewable power generation and distributed energy resources, design and operation of green hydrogen production and storage. Part of the research happening at the Smart Grid and Green Hydrogen Research Lab at York, funded by the province’s Hydrogen Innovation Fund, aims to integrate green hydrogen resources into electricity systems to decarbonize not only the power grid but also hard- to-abate sectors such as heavy-duty vehicles, fertilizers and steelmaking. In addition, the Climate-Data-Driven Design Facility for Built Infrastructure is a leading field-testing laboratory for studying the effects of climate variability on the behaviour of materials. This unique facility examines how climate conditions affect the behaviour of infrastructure materials used in systems such as roads, bridges and tunnels, and uses AI to analyze the data and create predictive models for long-term performance of infrastructure materials. These are just a few examples of the work being done.

York’s researchers are exploring ways to protect the environment and build climate resilience both locally and as far as away as the Arctic. That includes York’s Sustainable Energy Initiative, where researchers work on energy efficiency and conservation, renewable energy sources and community energy planning, while building partnerships and collaborations. Analytic work is also ongoing on the transport of pollutants throughout our atmosphere, such as Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances, known as PFASs. The Centre for Bee Ecology, Evolution and Conservation fosters interdisciplinary, innovative, collaborative and cutting-edge research to help sustain pollinators globally through the development of policies and environmental management for the long-term sustainability of bees and the vital ecosystem services they provide. The research project, Landscapes in transition: Environment sensitivities due to climate change, utilizes innovative techniques in mapping, monitoring, and predicting of environmental geohazards and focuses on developing an understanding of several modes of landscape disturbance, such as permafrost thaw, sediment erosion changes and flood and drought impacts. There is also work being done on a Climate Change Solutions Park to showcase and lead the way on climate change solutions. The focus is on key climate solutions such as renewable energy, electric mobility, precision agriculture and leadership training.

York’s research centre OneWATER engages in interdisciplinary world-class research on sourcing, artificial intelligence, technologies, education and sustainability, resource recovery and reuse, as well as their environmental, educational and societal implications.  OneWATER incorporates researchers in labs that work on everything from microfluidic technology, global health, water engineering, innovative water technologies for environmental research, limnology, and safe and sustainable water through water resources engineering. In addition, York hosts the first of its kind United Nations Institute for Training and Research UNITAR Global Water Academy (UGWA), which delivers global virtual education and training to develop skills, generates risk assessments of water insecurity, and builds strategies for resilience, mitigation and adaptation measures in response to global environmental degradation. Recognizing that the global water crisis is urgent, and bold action and advocacy is urgently needed, the UGWA draws on national and internationally-renowned scientists, guest lecturers and professors to foster training and capacity development, empowering community based networks, and co-creating sustainable water solutions to work towards the vision of ensuring universal access to clean water and sanitation for all. These are just two examples of the leadership and robust research being done across the university in water and food security.

York has a rich and long history of scholarship in democratic studies with a breadth of researchers studying and researching the area. There are several organized research units at York that look at democracy, social movement, governance, displacement, migration, humanitarianism, democratic resilience, public policy and public trust. These include the Centre for Refugee Studies (CRS), Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies and the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC). There are multiple research clusters at the Robarts Centre, covering a diverse range of topics in the field of Canadian studies. A few of these clusters include Black Canada, which examines the historical, cultural and various expressive productions of people of African descent in the Americas through the lens of Black Canada; the Borealis Council, which provides leadership on scholarly Northern research focusing on “northern” regions, particularly those in the Canadian Arctic and Subarctic; and CIVIS: Urban Governance & Citizenship, which brings together scholars and members of the community actively engaged in the consideration of urban governance in Canada. The newest cluster, International Higher Education: Ethics, Politics, Labour, is an interdisciplinary collective of scholars and educators interested in the ethical and political landscapes of international higher education, with a specific focus on how Canada and the United States shape the dynamic global movement of bodies, ideas, practices and infrastructures pertaining to higher education. CERLAC is a York hub for inter- and multidisciplinary research on Latin America and the Caribbean, their diasporas, and their relations with Canada and the rest of the world. Since its inception in 1988, the CRS has been recognized as an international leader in the creation, mobilization, and dissemination of new knowledge that addresses forced migration issues in local, national and global contexts.

York’s Manufacturing Technology Entrepreneurship Centre integrates critical aspects of interdisciplinary research in manufacturing, technology and entrepreneurship to reinforce research intensification by developing the application of new cutting-edge technologies, specifically those that lead to or support venture creation. Its mission is to engage collaboratively with academic and industry partners to optimize research potential, technology development and new design practices to forge impactful solutions. The Processing Structure Property Performance Materials Lab focuses on developing strong, lightweight materials to significantly improve functionality while prioritizing environmental sustainability. The lab’s research is a game changer in materials science and has led to breakthroughs that have been applied in crucial areas such as aerospace, cars, energy, defense and health care. This includes enhancing armored vehicles for General Dynamics Land Systems and Defence Research and Development Canada with an emphasis on creating lighter vehicles and advanced body armor. In the aerospace sector, the researchers play a key role in developing new materials for Aeroflux's aircraft brakes, contributing to lighter and more efficient components. In health science, the lab’s research has deepened the understanding of neck injuries resulting from car crashes. This contribution has led to the development of realistic human body models by the Global Human Body Models Consortium, improving injury prediction. Additionally, the researchers have been involved in creating materials that mimic brain tissue, a crucial aspect for studying head injuries, such as concussions and brain damage.

York's emergency disaster research centre York Emergency Mitigation, Engagement, Response and Governance Institute (Y-EMERGE), brings together researchers focusing on science, technology and social aspects of disaster and emergency management to develop, grow, and sustain transformative and multidisciplinary research and teaching in transformative disaster risk reduction, emergency preparedness, response, and recovery. Additionally, York’s state-of-the-art simulation laboratory (the Victor Phillip Dahdaleh Advanced Disaster, Emergency and Rapid Response Simulation Lab), is a cutting-edge, multi-function infrastructure that serves as a research and training hub, along with an Emergency Operations Centre –the first at a Canadian university. It is an interdisciplinary initiative with outstanding researchers from science, engineering, health and social sciences. It conducts research and training and provides crucial rapid-response support to partners with key expertise in emergency response coordination, continuity planning, cybersecurity risk, and critical infrastructure protection. Research includes emergency transportation and logistics; rapid-response mapping, sensing and visualization; and rapid-response artificial intelligence; and simulation and modelling. York is advancing its leadership in dual-use technologies, which are innovations with both civilian and defense applications. York’s Centre for Research in Earth and Space Science (CRESS) anchors a uniquely comprehensive space engineering ecosystem that integrates talent development, cutting-edge research and innovation. CRESS drives interdisciplinary collaboration across fields, from astronomy and astrophysics to geomatics and space engineering. Additionally, York is a growing leader in dynamic, control, and intelligent navigation. Driven by the Spacecraft Dynamics Control and Navigation Lab, it conducts research in autonomous systems and unmanned aerial vehicles. These research efforts are enabled by world-class labs, nanosatellite facilities, and mission simulation environments at York. Together York’s facilities and research centres foster a dynamic environment where ideas evolve into technologies with dual-use potential – advancing both civilian space exploration and terrestrial applications in defense, health and sustainability.

Chairs are expected to build significant new partnerships and collaborations with both Canadian and international entities (industry, health systems, government and not-for-profit organizations), as well as by and with Indigenous Peoples and communities, where appropriate.

York University upholds a strong, explicit commitment to decolonizing, equity, diversity and inclusion (DEDI), where inclusive and equitable researcher environments nurture multiple and intersectional ways of knowing and diverse teams pursue impactful scholarship in an environment grounded in fairness, respect and academic freedom.

York’s commitments to social justice are laid out in our DEDI Strategy, the Framework & Action Plan on Black Inclusion and the Indigenous Framework for York University.

How to apply

Applications are currently open until April 17, 2026. Please see our careers page for details.

Inquiries can be directed to: impactplus@yorku.ca.

Full program details can be found on the Government of Canada’s website.