Joining Forces to Find Answers — The International Research Chairs Initiative: International Development Research Centre

The new International Research Chairs Initiative aims to increase the impact of research and the vibrancy of research communities in developing countries. Teams consisting of a Canadian and a developing world researcher are taking aim at important social and scientific challenges, and in the process are working together to train a new generation of specialists.

A group of leading scientists from the developing world who specialize in health, the environment, and information technology hopes the new research program that has paired them with Canadian counterparts will help boost research capacities in their home countries.

In all, sixteen scholars have been brought together under the umbrella of the International Research Chairs Initiative (IRCI): eight are recently announced IDRC Research Chairs funded by IDRC, and an equal number are Canada Research Chairs.

This meeting of minds has its origins in a 2006 gathering of senior officials from Canadian universities, convened by Howard Alper, chair of Canada’s Science, Technology and Innovation Council. That meeting produced the suggestion that a version of the Canada Research Chairs program might do for developing countries what the Canada Research Chairs program has done for Canada.

When the idea was presented to IDRC, “we didn’t need much convincing,” recalled IDRC Vice-President Rohinton Medhora, addressing the April 2009 gathering that kicked-off the IRCI’s initial five-year program of work. That event also gave the Canada Research Chairs program and IDRC research chairs an opportunity to further detail their research and training plans.

The IRCI model applies the expertise of both the international and Canadian researchers to solving specific, practical problems in areas of ongoing concern to IDRC. [For the project details, see “Sharing Skills and Knowledge to Confront Real-World Problems” ].

More generally, a key trait of both the Canada Research Chairs program and the IRCI program is the aim of fostering cultures of research. Alper observes that the Canada Research Chairs program’s success in achieving this goal provides one explanation why South Africa looked to the Canadian example when it launched its own research chairs program in 2007.

Canada Research Chairs Executive Director Terry Campbell says there are several ways in which the program has enhanced Canada’s research capacities. During a five-year review, she recalls, “chair-holders did report a significant increase in their research productivity, in the number of highly qualified students they’ve been training, and in their ability to secure research funding… The program has been very helpful in creating a research environment to support the long-term retention and attraction of top researchers to Canada.”

Like the Canada Research Chairs program, the IRCI emphasizes training students to become the next generation of researchers and leveraging more support for research. The IRCI also stresses the exchange and dissemination of knowledge through networks. Rohinton Medhora believes that this focus on networking is crucial to solving problems that demand the attention of a variety of specialists, and that need to be addressed at a global level.

“When we think of the kind of issues we all face — as citizens, as governments, as countries — there’s no question that the way to tackle these is through exactly the kind of approach that lies at the heart of the IRCI,” Medhora says. It’s therefore important for the IRCI researchers to ponder “what kind of community of practice we can create, what kind of impacts we might have as a group, collaborating across cultures, across boundaries, and indeed across national systems.”

At sessions where the researchers compared notes among themselves and with IDRC program staff, there were indications that this kind of exchange of information and approaches is already starting to take place.

For example, Chinese scientist Yiming Shao (who is collaborating with York University’s Jianhong Wu) suggested that their work to mathematically model AIDS transmission patterns might have an application to IDRC-supported work on global tobacco control. Meanwhile, Tsinghua University’s Xiaoyan Zhu and the University of Waterloo’s Ming Li — who are working on a project to simplify Internet search engines so that more people in China has access to them — saw links between their project and ongoing work on human language technologies in South Africa and South Asia.

Joining Forces to Find Answers — The International Research Chairs Initiative

2009-05