Grants and Contributions

The objective of the IRP is to improve the ability of (SPO)s to participate in the social finance market (i.e. secure a repayable investment), as well as to engage in procurement and outcomes-based funding opportunities by:.• Enabling SPOs to gain a variety of skills and competencies along the investment readiness continuum;.• Supporting the readiness of established expert services providers to provide nation-wide capacity-building services to SPOs in one or more key area along the investment readiness continuum; and.• Supporting the advancement of Canada’s SI/SF ecosystems by responding to identified system-level gaps (e.g. building the capacities of social finance intermediaries, advancing impact measurement, and supporting SI/SF awareness and knowledge mobilization)..

Reaching Home aims to prevent and reduce homelessness across Canada. This is accomplished by mobilizing partners at the federal, provincial/territorial and community levels, as well as the private and voluntary sectors, and other stakeholders, to address barriers to well-being faced by those who are homeless or at imminent risk of homelessness.

Reaching Home aims to prevent and reduce homelessness across Canada. This is accomplished by mobilizing partners at the federal, provincial/territorial and community levels, as well as the private and voluntary sectors, and other stakeholders, to address barriers to well-being faced by those who are homeless or at imminent risk of homelessness.

This project seeks to improve protection and socioeconomic inclusion for Venezuelan refugee and migrant children and adolescents, especially girls, in host communities in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana and Peru. Targeting more than 41 thousand migrant and refugee boys, girls and adolescents. Project activities include: (1) providing technical assistance and advocacy for drafting national and local legislative and policy reforms that ensure gender-responsive, sustainable and implementable policies and services for migrants and refugees; (2) increasing the capacities of the social service workforce to improve protection for migrant children and adolescents; (3) providing technical assistance to implement life skills and network-building support strategies for adolescent girls and LGBTQ2 adolescents; and (4) increasing the capacities of adolescent girls and LGBTQ2 migrant adolescents by strengthening their life skills capacities and further access to employability and economic empowerment.

This project aims to improve the nutritional status of women, girls, and children under the age of five living in vulnerable situations in the regions of Mopti, Segou, and Timbuktu. The activities in this project include: 1) providing training to service providers including health, education, child protection, community mobilization, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) agents so that they can offer a comprehensive package of integrated gender-sensitive services such as nutrition, health, WASH, education, early childhood development, and child protection for children, adolescent girls and women; 2) to build or rehabilitate water, hygiene and sanitation infrastructures in communities, Early Childhood Development Centers and health centers; 3) to accompany and sensitize adolescent girls in and out of school on communication and speech, nutritional practices, mental health, children's and women's rights and available social services. This project will directly benefit 600,000 people, including 390,000 adults (75% women), 10,000 adolescent girls, and 200,000 children under the age of five (46% girls).

Contributes to the recovery of endangered, threatened, and other species of concern, by engaging Canadians in conservation actions to benefit wildlife and to protect aquatic species at risk.

To support the development and implementation of oceans conservation and management activities in Canada.

The Project will support the development of polarisation resolved single photon sensors over a broad range of photon energies (THz - telecom - visible) using photoexcitation of trions in gate defined quantum circuits in 2D quantum materials. Unique advantages of 2D quantum materials include bandgap tunability, photon polarisation to valley optical transitions, high quantum coherence and trion binding energy exceeding room temperature. The Project will support the development of quantum sensors in that quantum transport of a single electron from source to drain through a quantum dot (QD) proceeds at a specific value of back-gate voltage. When a single photon is absorbed in a QD, an exciton is created. An electron coherently interacts with the exciton forming a trion, changing the required back-gate voltage and quenching transport. Hence, the presence of a single exciton absorbed by a single photon can be electrically detected at a single electron level. The team will also explore methods to enhance the photon-electron interaction such as coupling to an optical cavity. The Project will advance the state-of-the art technologies for single photon sensing by the development of 2D materials-based quantum sensors.

With an increasing global demand for seaweed derived products and ingredients, as well as a broader public understanding of the important environmental services provided by our marine flora, there is growing interest from young entrepreneurs to develop Canada’s seaweed cultivation industry to achieve financial, societal, and environmental benefits. In this context, Merinov and NRC are developing projects to support the development of larger, better managed, and more sustainable seaweed cultivation industry while supporting marine habitat conservation and preserving the genetic resources native to Canada’s marine zones, with a focus on Atlantic Canada. This project will support a sustainable seaweed aquaculture industry for the main cultivated species in the Atlantic coast of Canada, the sugar kelp. Biobanking is crucial to reach this goal, as the preservation of properly characterized strains will allow the preservation of genotype and phenotype diversity for conservation, improvement of cultivated strains, and increased population resistance to various natural (climate cycle, parasites, disease, etc.) or anthropogenic (climate change, development, aquaculture, oil spills, etc.) disturbances. To define which strains/populations to biobank, there is a need to better understand the seaweed ecology and population delimitation and if the environment influences their phenotype or quality. Three main linked objectives will be developed here: 1) defining morphology and genetics of the sugar kelp populations, 2) developing technology and identify which populations to biobank and 3) developing a bank of seed strains with selected characteristics. Samples of wild sugar kelp will be collected in two provinces where seaweed aquaculture is rising: Quebec and Nova Scotia. A better understanding of the population genetics and gene flow through a high resolution assessment of wild and cultivated populations will also provide important relevant information to management agencies and to the industry

Innovation in nanophotonics has been driven by major advances in nanofabrication. As nanophotonic devices have a nearly limitless design space, equally critical has been the ability to simulate light interaction with complex nanostructures. Advanced nanophotonic design commonly relies on computationally expensive 3D simulations. This project directly addresses the use of AI to assist with the design of photonic components, both for “classical” devices where improvements in performance or size will be sought, as well as design of new devices such as optical phased arrays, which rely on grating couplers as fundamental blocks. Artificial Intelligence will be used to develop efficient and accurate surrogate models for subwavelength grating structures. This will reduce the scale of simulations by a factor of hundreds and enable efficient design of advanced nanophotonic components that require metamaterials.