The research partner (applicant) must be a principal investigator at a publicly-funded Ontario-accredited, public post-secondary institution (college, university, research hospital).
For college projects, the applicant must be a representative of the college applied research office, with the primary researchers included as team members.
For both university and college, the applicant must have an arms-length relationship with the industry partner as defined on the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) website (refer to the section “Conflict of Interest Guidelines for Partner Organizations”).