Global Research Funding Opportunities Available:

York’s Global Research Excellence (GRE) Seed Fund empowers York to drive positive change by supporting York’s emerging and established research leaders collaboratively build and lead impactful global research networks. Being one of Canada’s largest research-intensive universities, York operates on a global scale by serving as an international hub for many critical areas of inquiry.

York’s Global Research Excellence (GRE) Seed Fund fulfills the University’s commitment, in Engaging the World: York University’s Internationalization and Global Engagement Strategy launched in 2023, to strengthen international research engagement by investing in a seed fund to catalyze such collaborations.

The focus of GRE’s funding streams is to advance York’s global engagement and research impact as detailed in York University’s Academic Plan 2020-25 and the Strategic Research Plan (SRP). The SRP has prioritized York researchers address the following pressing issues of our time:

Digital Cultures and Disruptive Technologies
Healthy Communities, Equity and Global Well-Being
Indigenous Futurities
Climate Action for a Sustainable Planet
Social Justice, Peace and Equitable Relations
Inter- and Transdisciplinary Research Innovation.

Click here to learn about Submitting a GRE Proposal

“Building international, values-driven partnerships underscores York University’s dedication to working together cross-culturally to address critical world issues. The GRE Fund is an investment in the transformative work of the York community and will provide mutually beneficial opportunities for our researchers, students and partners to continue to translate research outcomes into social and economic benefits in Canada and beyond.”

Rhonda Lenton
President and Vice-Chancellor
York University

Meet some of our leading researchers

Laleh Seyyed-Kalantari

Research carried out by Laleh Seyyed-Kalantari at the Lassonde School of Engineering (and published in the journal Nature Medicine) has found that there are biases embedded in AI algorithms, leading to wrong diagnoses or incorrect treatments for certain socio-demographic groups, particularly marginalized or minority populations. Read More

Godfred Boateng

Boateng’s research focuses on resource insecurity, health, and sustainable livelihoods; the socio-ecological determinants of cardiometabolic conditions in aging adults; social inequity in health systems; quantitative data analysis methods and survey scale development; and COVID-19 related health effects. Read More

Satinder K. Brar

Her research interests lie in the development of finished products (formulations) of value-added bioproducts based on wastewater and wastewater sludge.
She is a recognized leader in her field of advanced and applied biotechnology, be it about the value-addition of residuals or the holistic treatment of emerging contaminants in the environment. Her research has transcended frontiers and is now adapted all around the world. Read More

Amirta Daftary

One of York’s leading researchers in the Global South, Dr. Daftary collaborates to study infectious disease such as malaria, HIV and tuberculosis (TB). This work explores not only combatting the diseases themselves but also involves researchers working to understand their socio-economic consequences. Read More

Joel Zylberberg

He’s the Canada Research Chair in Computational Neuroscience, a fellow at CIFAR (Canadian Institute for Advanced Research) and a core member of VISTA.
His research explores how the brain encodes information from the external environment and the processes through which these representations are acquired. His goal is to leverage their proficiency in machine learning and sensory neuroscience to pioneer a groundbreaking camera-to-brain translation device. This innovation aims to offer the possibility of sight restoration for the visually impaired. Read More

Carys Craig

One of the significant controversies about AI is the impact of generative software on the use and production of cultural works. The fast-growing popularity of these tools raises big questions about the ethics of AI-generated works and whether they amount to a technologically advanced form of plagiarism. Read More

Eric Kennedy

Eric Kennedy is an associate professor in York University’s Disaster & Emergency Management program in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS). His research focuses on how to: improve decision-making in emergency contexts; enhance disaster training; create better policies for preventing and responding to emergencies; and improving research and evaluation methods in disaster contexts.

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Usman Khan

Usman Khan is an associate professor of civil engineering at the Lassonde School of Engineering. His research interests lie in water resources engineering, focusing on urban hydrology, including flood risk assessment and uncertainty analysis, sustainable water resource management and infrastructure, and the impacts of climate change on these systems. Khan specializes in developing novel machine learning and artificial intelligence methods for various engineering applications. The role of civil engineering in creating vibrant, liveable and sustainable cities is a strong motivator for Khan. He is committed to using his professional practice to meet the challenges that face the urban environment.

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Sapna Sharma

Sapna Sharma is an associate professor in the Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, at York University. Her research highlights how lakes worldwide respond to climate change, including rapid ice loss, warming water temperatures, degrading water quality, and changing fish distributions. Her research has led to an induction into the Royal Society of Canada – College of New Scholars, she has been named one of Canada’s Top 10 Women Water Scientists, she has earned the prestigious Ontario Government Early Researcher Award and York University President’s Emerging Research Leadership Award. She is a dedicated science communicator and is the founder of SEEDS, an outreach program for refugees. For her commitment to science outreach, she was invited to serve as vice-chair for the Royal Canadian Institute for Science and awarded the Canadian Council of University Biology Chairs Science Promotion Prize

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