URC – Renewal nominations

The Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation obtains an opinion from the Dean to whom the nominee reports. If the Dean does not support the application for renewal, the renewal process does not take place.

Upon receiving a positive recommendation from the Dean, the Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation will contact the nominee to provide more information about the next steps and ask for the name and contact information of four independent reviewers (including at least one from abroad), who could be contacted by the Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation to provide an evaluation of the renewal application.

Conflict of Interest Policy

In order to avoid any conflict of interest, please ensure that the potential reviewers:

• are not affiliated in any way with the University of Ottawa (including hospitals and research institutes);
• have no personal relationship with the nominee (including close friend, relative, former PhD or postdoctoral supervisor, mentor, a student previously under the nominee's supervision);
• have not collaborated, published or shared funding with the nominee in the last six years, or have no plans to do so in the immediate future;
• are not involved in the proposed program of research; and
• are not in a position to gain or lose financially/materially from the outcome of the nomination.

Upon being contacted by the Research Chairs Coordinator, the nominee is asked to prepare an application for renewal. In collaboration with their Faculty’s Research Facilitator, nominees are required to submit the following documents:

• Performance report written by the nominee (three to five pages).
• Proposed research program written by the nominee (three to five pages).
• A statement on the equity, diversity and inclusion philosophy and practices put in place during the first term and planned for the second term (maximum one page);
• Budget plan and justification: The total budget is $25K per year for five years and may be used to support the core costs of research (e.g., research assistants/associates, graduate students, consumable supplies, and user fees). Up to $5K of this total budget may be used as a salary supplement to the nominee. In this section, please explain and justify how the budget will be used and the proportion of the budget to be allocated to costs of research versus a salary supplement. Note that the funding allocated for the core costs of research is provided in addition to and not as a substitute for a nominee’s concurrent sources of external funding;
• Current Curriculum Vitae (OCGS format (PDF, 128 KB); last 8 years);
• List of five (5) most significant research contributions made during his or her career, explaining their impact;
• Detailed instructions (PDF, 183 KB)

Please send the renewal application to the Research Chairs Coordinator.

The Research Chairs Coordinator is responsible for sending the renewal application to external reviewers in the field.

The renewal application, including external evaluations, is adjudicated based on the following criteria (last five years of the chair mandate):

• The level of research excellence and productivity achieved by the nominee;
• The level of impact and international recognition in the field;
• The ability to have successfully attracted and retained excellent students, trainees and future researchers; and plans to do so in the next chair mandate;
• The relevance of the proposed research program in relation to the University’s Strategic Areas of Research;
• The originality and quality of the proposed research program; and
• The level of consideration of equity, diversity and inclusion principles in research over the first term, and in the proposed second term.

Following the RCEC’s final recommendation, a notice of decision is sent to the Dean of the nominating Faculty. There is no appeal process.