Description

A number of Health Professional Student Research Awards (formerly the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Student Research Awards) will be provided annually to each Canadian school offering a program for a regulated health profession (e.g.,  medicine, dentistry, nursing, physiotherapy, etc.) to enable health professional students to gain exposure to health research at any time throughout the year. The expected outcome is the attraction of excellent students into careers as clinician-investigators.

Health professional schools that do not currently participate in this program and wish to request a voucher allocation should have a representative from the office of the Vice-President of Research contact CIHR for information on the process for doing so.

These awards are normally offered to health professional students enrolled in an undergraduate program leading to Canadian licensure.  Students enrolled in a program requiring a graduate degree for Canadian licensure are also eligible. 

General Terms and Conditions

Awards are generally held for the maximum term of three months and must be held for a minimum of one month.  Students who are registered in a health professional school will receive a stipend of $4,251 (for a three-month term).  Those registered in a program leading to a combined degree (e.g., MD/MSc or MD/PhD) will receive a stipend of $5,961 (for a three-month term).

Some institutions may prefer to divide the funding between more students than the number of vouchers allocated.  These requests will be considered by CIHR with the condition that the following minimum monthly stipends are provided to the awardees:

• $1,417 for those registered in a single degree program; and
• $1,987 for those registered in a combined degree program.

Institutions will receive their voucher allocations for the fiscal year (April 1, 2005 through March 31, 2006) no later than February 1, 2005.  For the new allocations, nominations must be received by February 15, 2006, with awards starting no later than March 1, 2006.  Please note that vouchers that are not used cannot be carried over into the next fiscal year.

Awardees are not permitted to hold more than one CIHR training award of any type concurrently.

Undergraduate Health Professional Clinical Research Immersion Award

This version of the Health Professional Student Research Awards program is designed to provide a more extended exposure of undergraduate health professional students to a robust environment of clinical research under the direct supervision of a successful and experienced clinician-investigator.

• Health professional schools may combine four vouchers in order to enable undergraduate health professional students to integrate one full year of health research training into the course of their studies toward a health professional degree.  Students enrolled in a program requiring a graduate degree for Canadian licensure are also eligible.
• The school must designate a clinician-investigator committed to the supervision of the undergraduate throughout the training experience. The supervisor should normally hold peer-reviewed research funding and be actively engaged in an environment of successful health research.
• The student will receive a stipend of $20,000.
• Tuition fees for the health professional degree program will not be charged during the period of research training.
• For the Immersion Awards, nominations must be received by February 15, 2006 at the latest, with awards starting no later than March 1, 2006.
• CIHR requires a final report (two-page maximum) to be submitted by the student with the assistance of their supervisor within one month of completion of the immersion award, describing the research activities undertaken and results achieved. 

Applications

Eligible students should contact the Dean or Program Director to submit an application.  The Dean or Program Director will select the recipients of awards in that school and contact CIHR to activate the awards.

Candidates must have completed at least the first year of study in a health professional school

To activate awards, CIHR requires information indicating the distribution of vouchers by health professional school, a brief justification of the distribution and a one page description of each health professional program in which nominated students are enrolled.  In addition, the following information about the nominated students is required:

• name of nominee;
• degree program;
• status of degree when award will be held (e.g., after first year);
• name of supervisor;
• research project title; and
• start and end dates of the award.