Grants and Contributions

The IIJ offers a three-year, multi-sectoral, comprehensive capacity-building programme, encompassing foundational courses on successfully investigating and prosecuting crimes related to the financing of terrorism and other transnational crimes and seizing profits and assets gained from or for the purposes of these crimes; thematic regional workshops on key and emerging Countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) issues; and support for the development of a contextualised good practices manual on public-private cooperation in CFT.

The project will contribute to increased resilience against foreign and national information operations that seek to erode the quality of democracy and the international rules-based order. The project will first conduct an extensive network analysis, qualitative interviews with stakeholders, and desk research to establish a solid empirical foundation about “information operations” (those operations and actors seeking to influence the public discourse and election campaigns) in each country. The project will combine local knowledge on key actors and key narratives being spread online with research techniques seeking to draw a picture of the way the political debate is being shaped by Foreign Influence and Manipulation of Information (FIMI). Subsequently, the project team will conduct an extensive mapping exercise in each pilot country and identify key civil society actors that are working on pro-transparency political reforms, political participation of women and the youth, and other related issues. Finally, the project will create spaces of dialogues to bring together oversight actors (i.e. electoral management bodies, political finance oversight agencies, etc.), legislators and civil society organizations to share experiences and lessons learnt, which will, in turn, build their capacities not only to better understand the problem but also equip them with practical guidelines for developing appropriate policy measures to improve information integrity in online spaces, including designing appropriate interventions to tackle the use of FIMI against women.

This project aims to enhance the economic empowerment of women paid childcare providers in Kenya and Malawi.
Project activities include: (1) supporting women's paid childcare groups and collectives to develop and execute gender-responsive advocacy and coordination strategies; (2) developing gender and disability-responsive curriculum, training, and certification standards for childcare; (3) supporting policymakers and regulators to advance gender-transformative laws, policies and regulations for childcare; (4) developing campaigns to raise awareness about sexual and gender-based violence and the rights of women in paid childcare; (5) providing matching grants to local organizations to develop and expand innovative and gender-responsive business services and models for women paid childcare providers; and (6) supporting financial service providers to develop and expand gender-responsive products or services that meet the needs and capacities of women childcare providers.

World University Service of Canada (WUSC) implements this project in partnership with local organizations Uthabiti Africa, the Coalition of Violence Against Women and the Women’s Legal Resources Centre, in collaboration with other local partners. This project expects to reach 42,000 women childcare providers, including microenterprise operators and childcare workers, operating in target areas of Kenya and Malawi.

The Register of Damage for Ukraine records all eligible claims for compensation for damages, losses and injuries caused by Russian aggression in Ukraine. It also serves as evidence underlying such claims. It aims to provide a platform into which claimants in Ukraine can submit their claims and evidence. This includes verifying that the claims are eligible for inclusion in the Register. The Register seeks to rely on fully digital data and aims to operate a secure digital platform receiving, processing, organizing, categorizing claims and evidence, and facilitating decision-making on eligibility.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are energetic radio flashes that emanate from extragalactic sources of unknown origin. This project will use AstroSat and several sensitive ground-based radio telescopes (GBT, Effelsberg, and CHIME) to conduct simultaneous X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, and radio observations of FRB 20200120E, the closest known extragalactic repeating FRB, during a radio outburst. AstroSat will be used to search for multiwavelength emission from the source. The results from this study will provide new insights into the enigmatic FRB phenomenon and enhance Canada's reputation in space astronomy.

The Artemis III Geology Team Grant was awarded to Western University, whose scientist Dr. Gordon Osinski was selected to be part of the geology team through a NASA-led competitive process that was open to international scientists. The objective of this grant is to support the selected scientist and allow them to take part in the scientific team that will support the Artemis III mission planning and operations. This will include planning the scientific tasks of the astronauts as they walk on the Moon, ensuring that the mission achieves its scientific objectives, and the analysis of the returned lunar materials.

These data will be analyzed to study the properties of the giant galaxies and their related satellite systems including dwarf galaxies and globular cluster systems. These galaxies are selected to cover a range of local galactic densities so that star formation rates and histories can be studied in the context of local galactic environments.

This project will study a population of globular clusters surrounding a galaxy dubbed ‘The Sparkler’ which was discovered by Canadian astronomers in 2022. Using JWST, the team will determine the age and physical properties of the globular clusters, as well as analyzing the properties of the central galaxy.

Following the JWST ERS and Cycle 2 GO Announcement of Opportunity published on July 6, 2023, the CSA is providing funding via a Grant Agreement to the university to conduct their research using the JWST data.

This project will image a nearby galaxy with JWST to make the best available maps of the gas within it. Gas in galaxies is what causes them to grow and evolve over time, this gas feeds the birth of new stars and when stars create supernovae the gas gets stirred up by the shock waves from those explosions. By comparing this data to a set of simulated galaxies, it can be determined what the exact balance of energies in this galaxy is and how that balance gets tipped in the different parts of this galaxy.

In the realm of Autonomous Driving (AD), the application of Deep Learning (DL) and Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has been pivotal. However, ensuring the robustness of these technologies against cyber threats remains a critical challenge. This project proposes the development of a high-fidelity virtual platform to assess the certified robustness of DL and DRL algorithms in AD, focusing on cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The proposed framework leverages the capabilities of the Carla open-source simulator to create a realistic virtual environment that mimics real-world cyberattack scenarios on AD systems. This project will have three phases: the first phase will involve identifying and training baseline DL/DRL algorithms for AD and selecting the state-of-the-art methods suitable for various AD scenarios. In the second phase, the focus will be on developing a virtual platform prototype capable of accurately simulating diverse cyberattack scenarios, thereby providing a testbed for evaluating the resilience of DL/DRL-based AVs. The final phase involves training certified defense algorithms designed explicitly for DL/DRLbased AV systems, emphasizing their optimization for AD requirements and testing against a spectrum of cyber threats.