June Message from Goetz

Dear CNAS community,

Last July, Jon Veinot, college associate dean (STEM research), outlined the three foundational pillars of the CNAS Office of Research:

• Serving as collaborative integrators
• Expanding interdisciplinary education and research
• Achieving economies of scale in our core academic and administrative services

To build these pillars into a reality, our strategy centres on direct researcher support. We are actively working to ensure researchers across the college and the wider university are positioned to successfully secure funding, promote their expertise and build strong partnerships. Our core mandate is to help our researchers succeed while actively minimizing the time they spend on administration.

Here is a brief update on the initiatives we have been working on over the past few months to put this into practice.

Navigating a competitive funding landscape

With research funding becoming increasingly competitive – even in areas where we traditionally excel – we are actively cultivating robust partnerships with industry, government, funding agencies and international institutions. These alliances are crucial for unlocking new, non-traditional and interdisciplinary funding avenues to grow research programs.

Highlight: Renewed EESA Grant

CNAS successfully renewed a grant with Alberta Environment and Protected Areas for the Enhancing Environmental Science in Alberta initiative. This grant will support seven collaborative projects across the institution over the coming years. We have leveraged the college structure to enable streamlining of the granting process with EPA. We are grateful for the partnership with EPA to fund these projects.

Maximizing tri-agency success

Alongside the Research Partner Network (RPNet), we are rolling out a proactive support plan designed to clarify requirements, simplify internal deadlines, and guide researchers through the submission process for tri-agency funding.

Grant Registry: To support upcoming NSERC Discovery Grant applications, we have established a university-wide Grant Registry. Based on insights from last year, the 2026 registry is streamlined to make initial entry easier, provide targeted support and set the stage for rapid approvals. (If you haven’t signed up yet, you can here).

Enhanced support and AI tools: We want you to spend less time "fighting the system." To help with pre-planning and early feedback, we are partnering with the OVPR to develop secure, locally hosted, AI-supported tools to assist in proposal development.

Editing and peer review: Thanks to matched funding from the OVPR, we have allocated funds for dedicated editing support, and we are working closely with faculties to facilitate internal peer reviews.

Streamlining administration and review processes

In collaboration with Research Administrative Services, we have restructured our "behind the scenes" approval process both in terms of clarifying roles and responsibilities, and in the way the teams collaborate and communicate throughout the review process. Our aim is to give more time to write proposals while ensuring they meet all institutional and sponsor guidelines. These changes will create efficiencies and help us resource appropriately – it is not intended to add extra steps or levels of bureaucracy.

By providing clear, actionable feedback early in the process to both PIs and approvers, we have successfully reduced bottlenecks. Proposals now reach RAS in an average of just 2.5 business days.

"Consistent and thorough pre-review ensures we receive higher-quality applications right out of the gate, resulting in significantly fewer returns to researchers and a faster path to final approval." — YC Morrissey, Manager, Application Review Team

Thank you to the researchers, faculty, staff and leaders who have collaborated closely with us to find opportunities to streamline, empower and identify supports that will make an impact on research success across the faculties of ALES, engineering and science. The CNAS research team is committed to continuously evaluating and improving our support and processes. If you have any questions, recommendations or feedback please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at dapp@ualberta.ca.

Thank you,

Goetz Dapp
Director, Office of Research
College of Natural and Applied Sciences