Living Labs Call for Proposals 2025

Living Labs are inclusive spaces to tackle collective challenges through collaborations between researchers and different societal stakeholders across the innovation cycle, from co-defining problems to research and development to testing. Volt-Age Living Labs must exhibit three main characteristics:

1. Co-creation of research
2. Engagement of diverse stakeholders
3. Taking place in a real-life context.

This second Living Labs call for proposals is looking for projects based on new partnerships. Each successful project will be awarded up to $1.5M funding from the Volt-Age CFREF funds, with projects lasting 3 years.

Once the deadline has closed at 12:00PM EST on December 1st, 2025, an administrative review will be performed on all of the applications. This review is only to assess technical and eligibility elements, such as team size and makeup, page limits, and budget template formatting. This review is not evaluative.  

Each proposal will go through a rigorous two-step evaluation process that involves two distinct and independent adjudicating bodies:

1. Master Reviewers
2. Adjudication Jury

An international pool of Master Reviewers has been developed by the Volt-Age team. Master Reviewers are selected to participate for their experience and knowledge, including but not limited to: past involvement as chairs of NSERC and/or SSHRC evaluation committees, technical expertise in various fields relating to electrification (batteries and energy storage, smart buildings and grids, transportation, renewable energy systems), expertise in social innovation, entrepreneurship, and community partnerships, experience  with Indigenous community engagement in research, experience with Living Labs, and expertise in environmental impact and resource management. 

Master Reviewers will be required to state conflicts of interest with the Volt-Age program as a whole, and also with each individually submitted proposal. Master Reviewers will not be assigned to evaluate projects that they declare a conflict of interest with.  

A minimum of two Master Reviewers will evaluate each project – at least one with the expertise necessary to assess the technical aspects and a second with a complementary perspective. Each Master Reviewer will complete a separate, independent evaluation of each proposal assigned using the [link to file again] Evaluation Criteria with space to add notes or comments.

The results of the Master Reviewer evaluations will be compiled by the Volt-Age team into a synthesized report. This report included a summary table of the Master Reviewer evaluations, as well as a brief analysis of the proposals looking at themes and platforms, areas or research and fields of study, and team makeup. This report, along with the full proposal dossiers (summary sheet, full proposal submission, and full evaluations), will be sent to the Adjudication Jury. This report does not offer any commentary of any kind on the selection process, nor does it make any recommendations as to the projects that should be chosen for funding.

The Adjudication Jury will chaired by the VPRII of Concordia University and include members of the Executive Committee as well as topical experts who have not been involved in other aspects of the evaluation process. The Adjudication Jury will meet to discuss the process and outcomes of the evaluation as well as the various elements to consider in selecting a balanced group of projects to fund. A final decision must be reached by consensus before any information is communicated to researchers.