The NSERC CREATE program (Collaborative Research and Training Experience) is one of the least well-understood funding mechanisms among the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s award portfolio, precisely because it doesn’t fund a “project” or an individual researcher’s program of work at all. It funds a training program — a structured, multi-institution, multi-year initiative built around developing graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, not around advancing a single principal investigator’s research agenda. That distinction shapes everything about how CREATE is applied for, evaluated, budgeted, and reported, and it is the single most important thing to understand before comparing CREATE to NSERC’s other major program, the Discovery Grant.
What NSERC CREATE actually funds
CREATE grants support the design and delivery of an innovative training program for highly qualified personnel (HQP) — primarily master’s and doctoral students, with postdoctoral researchers also eligible to participate — in the natural sciences and engineering. The program is explicitly meant to develop skills valued by both academic and non-academic employers: professional and transferable skills training, structured mentorship, and, critically, hands-on experience outside the home institution through mandatory research or professional internships and other mobility experiences.
A CREATE grant is not held by one investigator working alone. It is led by a program director but requires co-applicants at every participating institution, and it typically involves partner organizations from industry, government, or the non-profit sector who host trainee internships and help shape the training curriculum. The unit of funding is the training initiative itself — its curriculum, its mobility component, its partner network, and its plan for sustaining itself beyond the grant — not any single research question.
How CREATE differs from a Discovery Grant
NSERC’s Discovery Grant program is the point of comparison researchers most often reach for, and the two programs are structured almost as opposites within the same agency:
- What is being funded. A Discovery Grant funds an individual researcher’s (or small team’s) ongoing program of research. CREATE funds a training program — the research the trainees conduct is the vehicle for the training experience, not the object of the grant itself.
- Who applies and who benefits directly. A Discovery Grant is held by one researcher (or a small named team on a joint application). A CREATE grant requires a program director plus co-applicants across multiple institutions, and its direct beneficiaries are the cohort of trainees moving through the program.
- Evaluation criteria. Discovery Grants are assessed on the excellence of the researcher, the merit of the proposed research program, and (as one of three criteria) the researcher’s HQP training record. CREATE applications are assessed primarily on the merit of the training program itself, with team excellence and program management/sustainability as the other two major criteria — the research content is evaluated through the lens of whether it serves the training objectives, not on its own scientific merits in isolation.
- Mobility and industry engagement. Discovery Grants carry no mobility requirement. CREATE mandates minimum internship/mobility periods for participating trainees (a structured placement away from the home lab, often with a non-academic partner) as a core, non-optional program element.
- Renewal pattern. A Discovery Grant holder reapplies in a subsequent annual competition to continue funding after up to five years. A CREATE grant runs a single term of up to six years and is not designed as an ongoing, renewable funding line the way Discovery Grants are — a team that wants to continue training-focused funding after a CREATE grant ends must compete again as a new initiative.
- Can they be held together? Yes — a researcher can simultaneously be a Discovery Grant holder and a co-applicant or program director on a CREATE grant, since the two programs fund fundamentally different things. NSERC’s one-grant-at-a-time restriction that limits how many Discovery Grants a single researcher can hold does not extend to CREATE.
Funding amount and duration
Per NSERC’s own program description, a CREATE grant provides:
- Year one: up to $150,000 (NSERC notes actual amounts can vary by roughly ±$50,000 depending on the competition and the program’s scope).
- Years two through six: up to $300,000 annually (again with similar variability), for a program term of up to six years.
- Total value: up to approximately $1.65 million over the full six-year term.
- Trainee stipend requirement: at least 70% of the grant must go directly to supporting trainee stipends and related training costs — a structural feature that has no equivalent in a Discovery Grant, where funds are allocated across salaries, supplies, and other direct research costs at the researcher’s discretion within NSERC’s eligible-expense rules.
NSERC has also indicated that a CREATE program partnered with an equivalent German funding vehicle (through NSERC’s collaboration with Germany’s DFG) can extend to a nine-year term rather than six. As with any funder figure, confirm the current year-by-year budget ceiling and total directly on NSERC’s own CREATE program page before building a proposal budget around it — NSERC updates program parameters between competitions.
Eligibility
Program director and co-applicants
The program director must hold a full-time position at an NSERC-eligible Canadian university and work in an NSERC-supported field. A researcher cannot direct more than one active CREATE grant at the same time. Every participating institution in a multi-institution CREATE program needs at least one co-applicant based there, and while adjunct professors can serve as co-applicants, they cannot serve as the program’s lead (director) applicant.
Trainees
Master’s and doctoral students must make up at least 60% of the trainees participating in the program. Mobility is mandatory and scaled to degree level: NSERC’s guidance specifies a minimum one-month mobility/internship experience for participating master’s students and a minimum two-month experience for participating doctoral students, typically spent with a partner organization or at a collaborating institution outside the trainee’s home lab.
Institutions and partners
CREATE is inherently a multi-institution, often multi-sector program. Partner organizations — industry, government, or non-profit — are a normal and often expected part of a competitive application, since they host the mandatory mobility placements and demonstrate that the training program connects to non-academic career paths, not only an academic pipeline.
How to apply: the two-phase competition
CREATE runs as a two-phase competition:
- Phase 1 — Letter of Intent (LOI). Applicants submit a Notice of Intent package (NSERC Form 187, Form 100, a letter of institutional support, and a list of suggested reviewers). NSERC uses this phase to screen initiatives before inviting a subset forward to the full application.
- Phase 2 — Full application. Invited applicants submit a comprehensive Form 102 application: the full training-program design, team CVs, and institutional support letters from every participating institution.
NSERC evaluates full applications against three published criteria: merit of the training program (weighted most heavily, around 50%), team excellence (around 25%), and program management and sustainability (around 25%) — including how the program plans to continue benefiting trainees, or wind down responsibly, once NSERC funding ends. Because CREATE runs on a periodic, not annual, competition cycle and exact deadlines shift between rounds, always confirm the current Phase 1 and Phase 2 deadlines directly on NSERC’s CREATE program page before planning an application timeline.
Where CREATE fits in Canada’s funding landscape
CREATE sits within the same Tri-Agency structure described in CASRAI’s guide to Canada’s Tri-Agency research funding system (CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC), though CREATE itself is an NSERC-specific program rather than a jointly administered Tri-Agency one. It is best understood alongside NSERC’s other training- and career-stage-focused mechanisms rather than alongside its individual research-operating grants:
- The NSERC Discovery Grant funds an individual researcher’s ongoing program of research and is the program CREATE is most often confused with, despite funding a fundamentally different thing (see the comparison above).
- NSERC’s individual postdoctoral funding has been folded into the harmonized NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship / Canada Postdoctoral Research Award — a mechanism that funds an individual postdoctoral researcher directly, unlike CREATE, which funds the training program a postdoc might participate in as one of its trainees.
- The Canada Graduate Research Scholarship (CGRS-M / CGRS-D) funds individual master’s and doctoral students directly — again a contrast with CREATE, which funds the structured, cohort-based program those students might be trained through, not their individual stipends as a standalone award.
- CASRAI’s broader guide to postdoctoral fellowships in Canada and guide to Canada Excellence Research Chairs cover other career-stage and personnel-focused Canadian funding mechanisms that, like CREATE, sit outside the standard individual-operating-grant model.
See the CASRAI grants-management pillar for the full landscape of Canadian and international funding mechanisms this guide connects to.
Frequently asked questions
Is NSERC CREATE the same as a Discovery Grant?
No. A Discovery Grant funds an individual researcher’s ongoing program of research; CREATE funds a structured, multi-institution training program for graduate students and postdocs, with mandatory mobility and professional-skills components. A researcher can hold both at the same time, since they fund different things.
How much funding does an NSERC CREATE grant provide?
Per NSERC’s program guidance, up to roughly $150,000 in year one and up to roughly $300,000 annually for years two through six, for a total of approximately $1.65 million over a six-year term, with at least 70% required to go toward trainee stipends. Confirm current figures directly on NSERC’s CREATE program page, since funder budget parameters can change between competitions.
Who can be the program director on a CREATE application?
Someone holding a full-time position at an NSERC-eligible Canadian university, in an NSERC-supported field, who is not already directing another active CREATE grant. Adjunct professors can be co-applicants but not the lead (director) applicant.
Does CREATE require an industry or non-academic partner?
NSERC does not make a partner organization a strict eligibility requirement in the same way it requires co-applicants at each participating institution, but partner organizations are a normal and typically expected part of a competitive application, since they host the mandatory trainee mobility/internship placements and demonstrate the program’s connection to non-academic career paths.
How long does a CREATE grant run?
Up to six years, structured as an initial year followed by up to five further years of funding. A CREATE grant partnered with Germany’s DFG under NSERC’s collaboration arrangement can run up to nine years.
Always confirm current CREATE competition deadlines, funding parameters, and eligibility rules directly on NSERC’s own program page before building an application or a budget around figures cited here — NSERC updates program details between competitions.
