NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship

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

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 17 Jul 2026

Worked examples

Is an instance

A recent engineering PhD applies for Tri-Agency postdoctoral funding through NSERC's competition deadline (mid-October) under the Canada Postdoctoral Research Award rather than the discontinued standalone NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship -- the application route, value ($70,000/year), and two-year duration carry over from the legacy program, but the award is now issued as a CPRA, not an 'NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship.'

Is an instance

A researcher who held an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship under the legacy program before it closed continues to report it by its original name on a CV or 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 NSERC's live competition is not applying for an 'NSERC 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 NSERC remains the agency through which a natural-sciences-and-engineering applicant applies.

Not an instance

A postdoc paid a salary directly from a principal investigator's NSERC Discovery Grant is not holding an NSERC 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 NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship was the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’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. As of the most recent competition cycle, NSERC no longer runs this program as a standalone award: it has been consolidated, together with the equivalent individual postdoctoral programs previously run separately by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), into a single jointly administered award: the Canada Postdoctoral Research Award (CPRA).

What the legacy NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship funded

Under the discontinued standalone program, an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship provided:

A two-year term. Awards funded 24 months of mentored postdoctoral research, not a renewable multi-year appointment.
A fixed annual stipend. The award’s most recent published value was $70,000 per year, 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 in an NSERC-eligible field, within a defined number of years of finishing their degree, and could not already hold another postdoctoral award from NSERC, CIHR, 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 new Canada Research Training Awards Suite (CRTAS), 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 ‘NSERC,’ ‘CIHR,’ or ‘SSHRC’ Postdoctoral Fellowship, a current applicant applies for the CPRA through whichever agency’s mandate best matches their proposed research — NSERC for natural sciences and engineering, CIHR for health research, SSHRC for social sciences and humanities — with each agency running its own deadline within the shared program.

The CPRA’s headline terms closely track the legacy NSERC program’s: a $70,000 annual stipend for a 24-month term. Eligibility criteria include holding or expecting to hold a doctoral or 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 and degree-location conditions apply and vary by applicant category, so eligibility should always be confirmed against the 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 an NSERC 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 NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship’ as a currently open competition should be understood as pointing to the CPRA in practice — NSERC’s own site now redirects legacy postdoctoral-program URLs to its consolidated funding-opportunity listing rather than a standalone NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship page.

How this differs from an NSERC Discovery Grant

An NSERC 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 NSERC Discovery Grant, which is an investigator-held operating grant for an established researcher’s ongoing program of research; a Discovery Grant holder may employ and supervise postdocs as part of their research team, but paying a postdoc from a Discovery Grant’s personnel budget is a staff appointment, not a postdoctoral fellowship award held by the postdoc themselves. See CASRAI’s postdoctoral fellowship entry for how individually held fellowships generally differ from grant-funded staff positions and institutional training-grant slots across funders.

Frequently asked questions

Is the NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship still accepting applications?

No. NSERC has discontinued the standalone Postdoctoral Fellowship program. Applicants seeking equivalent Tri-Agency postdoctoral funding now apply for the Canada Postdoctoral Research Award (CPRA), applied for through NSERC, CIHR, 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 NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship’s most recently published value and duration, though eligibility details and deadlines differ by agency and should be confirmed directly on NSERC’s, CIHR’s, or SSHRC’s current program pages.

Does an old NSERC 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.

Who administers the Canada Postdoctoral Research Award?

NSERC, CIHR, 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 NSERC’s, CIHR’s, or SSHRC’s own program pages before relying on them for an application.

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

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Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

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