Supporting world-changing research

UBC consistently ranks as one of the world’s top research universities.

Our researchers’ ideas, innovations and discoveries are improving lives around the world. Learn more about how we are supporting excellence in research and scholarship.

Academic Excellence Funds - UBC Vancouver

The Office of the Provost and Vice-President, Academic, launched this fund to provide significant new resources to advance academic excellence and strengthen UBC in the years to come.

Since 2016, we have been devoting a portion of our annual revenue toward initiatives that help us attract the best faculty and students, support world-changing research, and deliver an exceptional learning experience.

The fund—projected to grow to in excess of $30 million per year by 2018/19—supports initiatives that will further differentiate UBC as a top-tier global institution.

It will allow us to be nimble in the rapidly changing landscape of higher education, and will enhance our support of research-informed transformation of teaching and learning at UBC.

These targeted investments will draw the world’s top scholars and researchers, as well as a diverse class of exceptional graduate and undergraduate students who are intellectually curious, academically gifted and socially engaged.

The Provosts on both the Vancouver and Okanagan campuses will consult broadly with the academic community on how to prioritize allocations of the fund and will report annually on the impact of our investments.

For more information about the fund on the Vancouver campus and its governance, see the terms of reference.

UBC Health

UBC Health is a partnership of all academic health programs at UBC. It promotes and facilitates internal collaboration, and provides a coordinated interface with the developing province-wide Academic Health Science Network.

UBC Health supports the establishment and pursuit of common goals while respecting the autonomy of the distinct health disciplines. The primary outcomes are expected to include:

  1. Enhanced performance in priority areas of cross-sector research and translation to patient care;
  2. Strengthened support for health research through improved provincial data access and management, advocacy around favourable research funding policies, and the provision of cross-cutting infrastructure including sequencing, high-performance computing and grant facilitation;
  3. Education innovation in areas that are crucial to practitioner and system development, including integrated curricula, inter-professional education, joint programs such as biomedical engineering and applied programs such as health informatics;
  4. Targeted operational integration to strengthen capabilities and drive efficiencies, initially in Finance and IT, creating a platform for broader sector cooperation and synergy;
  5. Leadership in shaping sector dialogue and mobilizing activity around core systemic issues and opportunities, including clinical placements and the evolution of primary care.

Importantly, UBC Health is intended to complement the activities of individual faculties and schools through its focus on tasks of mutual importance that require intensive functional, subject and systemic co-ordination.

UBC Sustainability Initiative (USI) / Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS)

Building on 20 years of sustainability excellence at UBC, the UBC Sustainability Initiative (USI) delivers on our commitment to the University’s academic mission and advances the integration of sustainability across UBC.

USI works to embed sustainability across the curriculum and supports numerous applied research and leadership opportunities through on-and off-campus programs that engage students, faculty and staff in researching solutions to sustainability challenges. It demonstrate UBC’s global leadership in sustainability through our visionary 20-Year Sustainability Strategy, with the aim to improve human and environmental well-being, on and off campus.

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UBC ranks among the world’s top 20 public universities.