Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship Portability for Research Abroad

Banting Has Been Replaced by CPRA

The 2024 Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship competition, with results released in mid-February 2025, was the final competition for this program. Banting has been discontinued and replaced by the Canada Postdoctoral Research Award (CPRA). If you are considering a postdoctoral fellowship now, confirm your host institution and research plan with CPRA's own application process , since Banting itself is closed to new applications. The rest of this article addresses researchers who already hold a Banting fellowship and are finishing out its term.

What Banting Was Designed to Do

The Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship brought top early-career researchers, Canadian and international, to do postdoctoral work at a Canadian institution. That direction mattered: Banting was not a fellowship that sent Canadians to do a postdoc abroad. It funded research happening inside Canada.

How Banting Fit Into the Tri-Agency System

Banting was a joint program run across Canada's three federal research agencies together with the Government of Canada, rather than belonging to just one of them. Your Canadian host institution played a direct role in your application, since Banting nominations and hosting arrangements ran through that institution's research office rather than through an application you submitted entirely on your own. This institutional link is part of why the fellowship stayed anchored to a Canadian host for its full term.

Where You Hold the Fellowship

If you hold a Banting fellowship, you hold it at an eligible Canadian host institution, such as a university, an affiliated research institute, a teaching hospital, or in some cases a federal department or agency lab. The fellowship is tied to that host and to the research plan approved at application, so a change of host institution mid-award needs approval rather than being automatic.

Why It Does Not Travel Abroad

Because the program's purpose was building research capacity inside Canada, there is no mechanism to hold a Banting fellowship at an institution outside the country. If your research plan changes to require a foreign host for most or all of the fellowship, the funding structure does not support that move.

If Your Goal Is a Postdoc Abroad

Researchers who want a postdoctoral position outside Canada should apply directly to funding in that country, or to international postdoctoral programs run by the host university, a foreign national research agency, or organizations that specifically fund outbound postdoctoral research from Canada.

Eligible Institution Types

Banting hosts sit inside Canada's research system: degree-granting universities, hospitals and health research centres affiliated with a university, other research institutions, and in some cases federal departments or agencies with an active research mandate. What connects them is that they operate in Canada. A foreign university, hospital or lab, regardless of its research strength, does not qualify as a Banting host.

Banting vs. Programs That Send Researchers Abroad

It helps to separate Banting from fellowships built for the opposite direction. A program that funds a Canadian postdoc to work at a lab in the US, UK or elsewhere is an outbound fellowship, and it comes from a different funder with its own application and eligible-institution rules. Banting sat on the inbound side: it funded research happening at a Canadian host, for a fellow who could be Canadian or from anywhere else in the world. Mixing up these two directions is the most common source of confusion around Banting portability.

Common Situations Fellows Ask About

• A short research trip to a partner lab abroad: possible with your host institution's approval, while your fellowship stays anchored at your Canadian host.

• A job offer at a foreign institution during your fellowship term: accepting it generally means the Banting funding does not continue, since it is tied to your Canadian host.

• Switching Canadian host institutions mid-fellowship: possible in some cases, but needs approval rather than being automatic.

• Co-authoring or collaborating remotely with a foreign lab: does not affect your Banting eligibility, since your primary research base stays in Canada.

Timing Your CPRA Application Around Location Plans

If you are applying for CPRA rather than Banting, confirm your host institution and research plan in detail before you submit your application, since these fellowships are awarded to a specific, approved arrangement rather than to you in the abstract. If you already anticipate needing time at a foreign site during the fellowship term, flag that with your prospective host's research office at the application stage so any research stay gets built into the approved plan from the start instead of requested as a change mid-fellowship.

If You Hold Additional Funding Alongside Banting

Some fellows add a grant from their host's department, a private foundation, or a research council in another country to support a specific project component. Each of those funders sets its own rules, so an outside grant being flexible about foreign travel does not change Banting's own requirement that your primary fellowship base stays at your approved Canadian host. Confirm with your research office how any outside funding interacts with your Banting terms before you commit to it.

Who to Ask

Your host institution's research grants office administers the day-to-day rules of your Banting award for the remainder of its term and is the right contact for questions about eligible institutions, any change of host, or short research collaborations that involve travel outside Canada during the fellowship. If you are a new applicant rather than an existing Banting holder, ask your research office about CPRA instead, since Banting no longer accepts new applications.