Flexibility from Funders: A thank you

Earlier this week, Kevin Zhao was awarded a BHSc summer studentship (Congratulations!) - great news. But it was also illustrative of a remarkable flexibility in the funders; Kevin was able to defer his award to next Summer. My NSERC USRA and IIDR scholarship students were granted additional flexibility in start/end dates, and projects. My NFRF was topped up with 2.2 months of funding, and granted an additional year to spend the grant money in. NSERC Discovery Grants are eligible for 1-yr extensions. My institute is re-directing some of the overhead from my grants to help manage staff costs…

Combined with the completely unprecedented, world-leading student aid package announced by the Federal Government on Wednesday - I am so glad to see that (with few exceptions) research, science - and above all, our trainees, are an important part of the decision making process in this pandemic.