Research Admin Offices:

• ROADS

Opportunity Type:

• Grant

Value:

Individual projects can request either $700,000 (small project) or &1,400,000 (large project) per year over four years. Grant funding is provided in equal parts by NSERC and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE).

The aim is to fund one large or two small projects per call. The first Research Communities grant(s) will be awarded in April 2024.

CSE may request that applicants of small projects addressing similar, overlapping, or complementary areas merge their proposals to benefit from the full Research Communities grant.

Disciplines:

• Faculty of Science

Sponsors:

• Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC)

Deadlines:

Additional Dates:

• NOI - ASAP -
• LOI ROADS - September 27, 2023
• LOI Sponsor - October 18, 2023
• Sponsor Applications by invite only - January 17, 2024

Description:

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) are partnering to fund Research Communities to conduct unclassified research on cutting-edge technologies in areas of strategic importance to CSE and the Government of Canada. A Research Community is defined as a group of researchers – and their research personnel (i.e., students, post-doctoral fellows, and research professionals) – from multiple Canadian universities working in related domains and sharing NSERC-CSE funds awarded to their project(s).

This first Research Communities grant(s) focus on robust, secure, and safe artificial intelligence (AI). CSE is the sole partner organization and no additional partner organizations will be accepted.

Objectives:

• Generate new knowledge in robust, secure, and safe AI from either a model-centric or data-centric view.
• Enhance the capacities of Canadian universities to undertake research related to robust, secure, and safe AI.
• Help produce a new generation of data scientists and engineer’s sensitive to the issues around robust, secure, and safe AI.

Robust, secure, and safe AI can be approached from the following perspectives: data-centric, model-centric, and people-centric. While the people-centric approach is important, CSE focuses on the mathematical and statistical perspectives; the data-centric and model-centric approaches.

A data-centric approach focuses on the early stages of the AI process, where the emphasis is on improving data quality to achieve the desired robustness. Examples of data-centric approaches include data understanding (including analysis of bias), data validation and cleaning, and data augmentation. There is comparatively little research on methods for improving and/or responding to data quality issues. For this reason, CSE will favour proposals that incorporate data-centric approaches.

A model-centric approach focuses on the latter stages of the AI process, where the emphasis is on developing models that are robust in the presence of low-quality data. Examples of model-centric approaches to robustness and security include detection and handling of out-of-distribution data, anomaly detection, and uncertainty estimation.

Eligibility:

Canadian university researchers must be eligible to receive NSERC funds. CSE encourages researchers from multiple universities working in related domains to apply as a group to form a Research Community. However, only one application per researcher will be accepted under this call for proposals (as either applicant or co-applicant). This first Research Communities grant(s) will support unclassified research focusing on robust, secure, and safe AI. However, the funding is conditional on the applicant or one of the co-applicants, and some of the Research Community members (i.e., professors, students, and post-doctoral fellows) travel to Ottawa to conduct classified research at CSE throughout the grant period. See Classified research for details.

Resources:

Additional Details.

Webinars: NSERC and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) will be hosting joint webinars on the new NSERC-CSE Research Communities grants. These sessions will be offered virtually via Webex. Details are as follows:

English Session: Tuesday, September 12, 2023; 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time (EST)

Webex Link: https://nsercvideo.webex.com/nsercvideo/j.php?MTID=mb819ff005ca7998dea058a55a1e70b96

Meeting number: 2772 511 4213

Or to join by phone

+1-613-714-9906 Canada Toll (Ottawa)

1-844-426-4405 Canada Toll Free

Access code: 277 251 14213

French Session: Thursday, September 14, 2023; 1:00 – 2 :30 p.m. Eastern Time (EST)

Webex Link: https://nsercvideo.webex.com/nsercvideo/j.php?MTID=m3ba6fe11061822cc165844ae89337c65

Meeting number: 2771 689 3928

Or to join by phone

+1-613-714-9906 Canada Toll (Ottawa)

1-844-426-4405 Canada Toll Free

Access code: 277 168 93928

Contact:

For more information on how to apply contact Ryan Heyden, Senior Advisor.