University Department of Food Science Impact+ Research Chair in Transformative

The Canada Impact+ Research Chairs (Impact+) program is a one-time initiative designed to support institutions in attracting world-leading researchers whose work addresses critical national and global challenges. The program emphasizes both research excellence and tangible impact. Impact+ Chairs will receive long-term funding and institutional support to advance ambitious and transformative projects in Canada’s strategic priority areas, build and maintain exceptional research teams, and collaborate with partners across sectors and borders.

Impact+ chair holders are expected to drive the translation of discoveries into applications, commercialization and social and economic benefits for Canada and the world, while also developing the next generation of highly qualified personnel.

The Impact+ program provides opportunities for internationally renowned scholars and scientists in areas of strategic importance to Canada. Only candidates who are internationally based (both working and residing outside of Canada) at the time of the intake’s Final date to receive applications are eligible to apply.

Nominees must be full professors or associate professors or, if recruited from outside the academic sector, must possess the necessary qualifications to be appointed at these levels.

The Ontario Agricultural College is recruiting a Canada Impact+ Research Chair in Transformative & Translational Food Manufacturing Technologies, at an award value of $1,000,000/year
, of which a minimum of $700k/year will be available to fund the direct costs of the research activities of the chair holder and their team. The term is for 8 years, with a possibility for a four-year funded extension, at 50% of the original award value. The funding supports expenses related to compensation, as well as research activities for the chair holder and the chair holder’s team, and up to 25% of the direct costs of research can be used for indirect costs of research.

The Chair in Transformative & Translational Food Manufacturing is aligned with the federal strategic priority area of food security. It addresses a critical and widely recognized gap between discovery-driven food research and successful implementation in manufacturing environments. While Canada has strong capabilities in food chemistry, formulation science, and product innovation, many promising technologies fail to progress beyond laboratory or pilot scale due to unresolved challenges related to scale-up, process stability, manufacturability and market readiness.

This Chair will focus on the fundamental scientific and engineering principles that govern this transition, strengthening Canada’s capacity to translate food innovation into robust, scalable food manufacturing.

This Chair establishes translational food manufacturing as a distinct scholarly field with its own rigorous scientific foundations and direct relevance to industrial practice. The Chair will operate at the interface of discovery science and industrial reality, emphasizing translational research that is fundamentally rigorous yet informed by real production environments. The position will not focus on product or process design or incremental formulation, but rather on the enabling principles that determine whether technologies can be scaled, reproduced, and deployed reliably.

By engaging closely with Ontario and Canadian food manufacturers of different commodities (e.g., dairy, cereals) in a pre-competitive framework, strategically using key available facilities, such as the Guelph Food Innovation Center (GFIC), the Chair will align academic inquiry with manufacturing needs while preserving academic independence.

Institutionally, the Chair complements the University of Guelph’s established strengths in food chemistry, product development, food safety, fundamental food science, and food processing by focusing explicitly on the science of scale-up and manufacturing translation. Nationally, the Chair aligns with Canadian priorities in agri-food innovation, advanced manufacturing, and industrial competitiveness, while…