MEOPAR Expedition Fund
Arctic and Northern Regions
Environment, Energy and Natural Resources
Oceans, Fisheries and Aquaculture
Deadlines
Academic Unit: Inquire with unit
Memorial Deadline: Tuesday 27th, October 2026
External Deadline: Friday 30th, October 2026
Description
With funding from the Strategic Science Fund (SSF), MEOPAR has launched the Expedition Fund; a program to support Canadian leadership in ocean-going marine research.
MEOPAR is making it easier for Canadian ocean researchers to obtain funding for collecting observations at sea. With three different horizons (Rapid Response, Strategic Support, and Major Expeditions) the Expedition Fund addresses community needs on short to long timescales.
This program is designed to be fundamentally different in scope from the NSERC Ship Time Program (STP). Whereas the NSERC STP supports NSERC Discovery Grant holders and their individual research programs, the MEOPAR Expedition Fund is intended to support multidisciplinary collaborations on very different scales.
While we anticipate that some projects may leverage a complimentary proposal to the NSERC STP, eligibility for MEOPAR funding is greatly expanded under SSF, extending opportunities to researchers who may have had limited access to vessel funding in the past.
This program was developed in response to an identified need, in part, by the work of the National Research Vessel Task Team, which conducted a survey showing that of 50+ marine researcher respondents, 86% did not have sufficient access to research vessels, and only 30% had a recent opportunity to propose and lead a research expedition as Chief Scientist.
Expedition duration: Several days to several weeks, depending on vessel size
Deadline: October 30, 2026 at 23:59 EST
Webinar – September 17, 10:00 PST / 13:00 EST
See here for more information.