CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship

The CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship was the Canadian Institutes of Health Research's individually held, individually competed award funding up to two years of mentored postdoctoral research in a health-research field within CIHR's mandate, providing the fellow with a stipend (most recently harmonized at $70,000 per year) portable to an eligible Canadian or international host institution. CIHR has discontinued this standalone program: it has been folded, together with NSERC's and SSHRC's equivalent individual postdoctoral fellowship programs, into the jointly administered Canada Postdoctoral Research Award (CPRA) -- part of the Tri-Agency's Canada Research Training Awards Suite (CRTAS), which also replaces the three councils' separate master's and doctoral scholarship programs. A researcher researching 'CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship' or 'CIHR Fellowship' today needs the CPRA application process, applied for through CIHR for health-research proposals.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 18 Jul 2026

Worked examples

Is an instance

A recent PhD in epidemiology applies for Tri-Agency postdoctoral funding through CIHR's competition deadline (mid-September) under the Canada Postdoctoral Research Award rather than the discontinued standalone CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship -- the application route and general award structure carry over from the legacy program, but the award is now issued as a CPRA, not a 'CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship.'

Is an instance

A researcher who held a CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship under the legacy program before it closed continues to list it by its original name on a CV or Canadian Common CV (CCV) entry for that award year, even though a new applicant today would apply for and receive a Canada Postdoctoral Research Award instead.

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance

A current applicant submitting a fresh application in CIHR's live competition is not applying for a 'CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship' in the strict programmatic sense -- the standalone program has been discontinued, and the live award is the jointly administered Canada Postdoctoral Research Award, even though CIHR remains the agency through which a health-research applicant applies.

Not an instance

A postdoc paid a salary directly from a principal investigator's CIHR Project Grant is not holding a CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship (or a CPRA) -- they are institutional staff funded from the grant's personnel budget, not an individually competed, individually held fellowship recipient.

The CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship (also referred to as the CIHR Fellowship Program) was the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s own individually held postdoctoral award — competed for and held directly by the researcher, not paid to them as staff out of a principal investigator’s grant. CIHR stopped accepting new applications to this standalone program after its final competition: it has been consolidated, together with the equivalent individual postdoctoral programs previously run separately by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), into a single jointly administered award: the Canada Postdoctoral Research Award (CPRA).

What the legacy CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship funded

Under the discontinued standalone program, a CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship provided:

A two-year term. Awards funded up to 24 months of mentored postdoctoral research in a health-research field within CIHR’s mandate — biomedical, clinical, health systems/services, or population/public health — not a renewable multi-year appointment.
An annual stipend. The award’s value was harmonized at $70,000 per year in its most recent competitions, portable to an eligible host institution in Canada or abroad, similar in structure to the individually held fellowships described on CASRAI’s general postdoctoral fellowship entry.
Early-career eligibility windows. Applicants needed to hold, or be near completion of, a doctorate or equivalent health-professional degree, within a defined number of years of finishing their degree, and could not already hold another postdoctoral award from CIHR, NSERC, or SSHRC (including a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship).

What replaced it: the Canada Postdoctoral Research Award (CPRA)

The CPRA is part of the Tri-Agency’s Canada Research Training Awards Suite (CRTAS), announced in Budget 2024, which also consolidates the three councils’ previously separate master’s and doctoral scholarship programs into common, jointly administered awards. Rather than applying to a program branded specifically ‘CIHR,’ ‘NSERC,’ or ‘SSHRC’ Postdoctoral Fellowship, a current applicant applies for the CPRA through whichever agency’s mandate best matches their proposed research — CIHR for health research, NSERC for natural sciences and engineering, SSHRC for social sciences and humanities — with each agency running its own deadline within the shared program. CIHR’s CPRA deadline has fallen in mid-September (around September 16) in recent competition cycles, ahead of NSERC’s and SSHRC’s own deadlines within the same shared program; exact dates should always be confirmed on CIHR’s current funding-opportunity listing.

The CPRA’s headline terms track the harmonized value now common across all three legacy programs: a $70,000 annual stipend for a 24-month term. Eligibility criteria include holding or expecting to hold a doctoral or health-professional degree completed within a defined window before the application date, and a restriction against holding a tenure-track or tenured faculty appointment while receiving the award; specific residency, degree-location, and health-research-relevance conditions apply and vary by applicant category, so eligibility should always be confirmed against CIHR’s current program page rather than assumed to exactly mirror the discontinued program.

Why the naming matters operationally

For anyone doing research-administration work — verifying a CV entry, budgeting a fellow’s stipend against a current program, or advising a prospective applicant — the distinction matters in two directions:

Historical awards keep their original name. A researcher who held a CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship in a past competition year correctly continues to list it by that name on a CV, biosketch, or Canadian Common CV (CCV) entry; the program’s discontinuation does not retroactively rename past awards.
New applicants apply for the CPRA, not the legacy program. Search traffic and institutional web pages referring to ‘the CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship’ or ‘CIHR Fellowship’ as a currently open competition should be understood as pointing to the CPRA in practice — CIHR’s own site directs applicants to the consolidated Canada Postdoctoral Research Award listing rather than a standalone CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship page.

How this differs from a CIHR Project Grant

A CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship (or its CPRA successor) is an individually held training award for the postdoctoral researcher themselves. It is a different funding mechanism entirely from the CIHR Project Grant, CIHR’s core investigator-initiated operating-grant mechanism, which funds an established researcher’s own defined health-research project rather than a training award held by a postdoctoral trainee. A Project Grant holder may employ and supervise postdocs as part of their research team, but paying a postdoc from a Project Grant’s personnel budget is a staff appointment, not a postdoctoral fellowship award held by the postdoc themselves. See CASRAI’s postdoctoral fellowship entry, and its NSERC and SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship counterparts, for how individually held fellowships differ from grant-funded staff positions and institutional training-grant slots across Canada’s Tri-Agency funders.

Frequently asked questions

Is the CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship still accepting applications?

No. CIHR has discontinued the standalone Postdoctoral Fellowship (CIHR Fellowship) program. Applicants seeking equivalent Tri-Agency postdoctoral funding now apply for the Canada Postdoctoral Research Award (CPRA), applied for through CIHR, NSERC, or SSHRC depending on research area.

What is the value and duration of the program that replaced it?

The Canada Postdoctoral Research Award provides $70,000 per year for a 24-month term — matching the legacy CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship’s most recently published value and duration, though eligibility details and deadlines differ by agency and should be confirmed directly on CIHR’s, NSERC’s, or SSHRC’s current program pages.

Does an old CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship award need to be relisted as a CPRA on a CV?

No. An award held under the discontinued program correctly retains its original name for any competition year in which it was actually awarded; only new applications go through the CPRA.

Is the CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship the same as a CIHR Project Grant?

No. The Postdoctoral Fellowship (now the CPRA) is an individually held training award for a postdoctoral researcher. The CIHR Project Grant is a separate, investigator-initiated operating-grant mechanism that funds an established researcher’s own health-research project and can be used, among other things, to pay postdocs as staff — a different funding relationship from a postdoc holding their own fellowship.

Who administers the Canada Postdoctoral Research Award?

CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC jointly administer the CPRA as part of the Canada Research Training Awards Suite (CRTAS), with each agency running its own application deadline for applicants in its respective research areas.

Program status, funding values, deadlines, and eligibility criteria for Tri-Agency postdoctoral funding change; always confirm current details directly on CIHR’s, NSERC’s, or SSHRC’s own program pages before relying on them for an application.

Use in your systems

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Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

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