Eligibility
The Nominated Principal Applicant must be a trainee.
A primary supervisor must be identified on the application. An additional supervisor may be identified.
The program is open to Canadian citizens and permanent residents of Canada at the time of application.
Only students engaged in a full-time doctoral program that has a significant research component are eligible to apply. An eligible program of study must require that 75% of the students' time be devoted to research training. The research component must be a requirement for completion of the program, such as the completion of a thesis, a major research project, a dissertation, a scholarly publication, a presentation and/or an exhibit that is merit/expert reviewed at the institutional level. Doctoral programs that are based only on course work are not eligible. Joint doctoral programs with a professional degree (e.g. MD/PhD, MBA/PhD, DVM/PhD, etc.) and clinically-oriented doctoral programs (e.g. PhD in Clinical Psychology) are eligible if they have a significant research component as described above. For the purposes of eligibility assessment, the health professional degree portion of the combined degree program will not be counted as graduate study.
The table below outlines the maximum amount of time a candidate can be registered as a full-time student in a doctoral program (as of the application deadline), in order to be eligible to apply.1, 2
The maximum duration of award funding from all federal sources to undertake graduate studies is four years, including at the Master's level. Individuals who hold or have held a doctoral award from a federal source for a term of three years are not eligible to apply.
Individuals eligible to apply to the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships program or the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships program may also submit an application to the Doctoral Research Award program.
As of the application deadline, all candidates must have completed a minimum of 12 months of graduate study at the Master's or doctoral level.1
