There are two types of role:
- sponsor roles (often referred to as Primary Investigators or PIs), and
- sponsored roles.
Only faculty members can be sponsors. Administrators who are not faculty but who lead research projects must contact accounts@computecanada.ca so that we can make appropriate accommodations. Faculty roles are only granted to faculty from Canadian post-secondary academic institutions who are eligible for CFI funding.
Sponsored roles fall into two groups:
The difference is in whether the applicant is part of the supervisors local group, or a collaborator from a different institution.
All students in the group should select the appropriate student position (undergraduate, masters, doctoral). Non-students should select the appropriate position from postdoctoral fellow, researcher (but only if the person is actually paid by the PI’s institution to work as part of the group—all other associates should apply as “External Collaborator”) or non-research staff (e.g. administrators, secretaries, etc.—people who do not typically need access to compute resources).
All collaborators who are not formally part of the PI’s group should apply as external collaborators. An external collaborators is anyone working with the group who the PI is willing to sponsor. Note however that external collaborators must specify an institution different from that of the PI. If they are eligible for another role corresponding to a different position then they should select that position instead.