Institut Courtois Exploratory Projects

Deadline : November 17th, 2025 11h59 EDT  

Funding : 60 000$ to 400 000$ 

 

Institut Courtois is launching a call for exploratory projects. This year, one of our objectives is to fund projects that integrate AI and materials, and to stimulate our collaborations with the Accelerate Consortium (AC) and IVADO. These projects offer an opportunity to quickly secure funding for a bold initiative that would otherwise be difficult to finance. Once preliminary results have been obtained, researchers can apply for grants from various government funding agencies. This year, IVADO, through its Materials and Molecules cluster (R6), is offering a contribution as part of this call. It is not mandatory to take advantage of this contribution. 

 

Funding and Timeline 

Launch  Week of June 16, 2025 
NOI due  August 4th, 2025 
Full proposal (joint and regular IC program)  November 17th, 2025 
Funding notification  December 10, 2025 
Funding released  Jan 15th, 2025 

  

Amount  Length  Objectives
Maximum $200,000 (2X $100,000) 

IVADO contribution: 

$25,000/year 

 

2-years  

Jan 2026-Dec 2027 

  • High-risk, high-reward research 
  • New collaborations between co-applicants of different fields
  • IVADO R6: Foster collaborations between artificial intelligence researchers and those from the Institut Courtois 

 

Eligibility 

Applicants 

  • Principal investigator or one co-investigator has to be a regular member of the Institut Courtois; 
  • Principal investigators from other Canadian universities can be co-investigators and can receive funding via an inter-institutional agreement. 
  • The Principal Investigator (PI) may submit only one application to the regular IC program as a PI; 
  • While members may submit separate projects to the regular program and the joint IC/ICADO/AC program, the same project cannot be submitted to both programs. 
  • Project must align with research thrusts of the IC.
  • Successful applicants who are not currently members of the IC will need to apply to become members of the IC. 

IVADO Contribution: 

  • The project must align with the objectives of R6 and include an artificial intelligence component. 
  • Researchers already funded under an IVADO cluster are not eligible. 

Submission 

NOI:  

Non-eliminatory

  • Name of PI and co-PI; 
  • Title of the project; 
  • 10 key words; 

Please fill out the following form: https://forms.office.com/r/HLsfpajZVw?origin=lprLink 

Complete application 

Must include: 

  • A research proposal including (maximum 5 pages);
  • Alignment,  
  • Methodology,  
  • Objectives,  
  • Feasability,  
  • Team justification,  
  • Financing strategy for the next step of the project 
  • References (maximum 1 page);  
  • Budget (1 table) and budget justification ( 1 page max); 
  • Biosketch CV (2 pages) of all team members 

Proposals will be evaluated by an evaluating committee based on the following Critere projet exploratoire IC 2025

Documents must be written in French or English, single-spaced, using 12-point Times New Roman font and with a minimum 1-inch margin all around.

Applications must be submitted by email in one pdf file to institut-courtois@umontreal.ca and named as follows: PILASTNAME_exploratoryprojectIC2025 

A follow-up report must be submitted one year after the project start date. 

For any additional information, please contact Nathalie Tang, Coordinator of the Institut Courtois.

The masculine gender is used in this document as a neutral form and refers equally to women, men, and individuals of all gender identities