Canada invests $5.6M into unstructured data research project

The Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSE) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) have confirmed funding for a new research partnership that will focus on exploratory analysis for unstructured data. 

The project has been awarded $5.6 million over a four-year period.

Professor Benjamin Fung from the School of Information Studies at McGill University will lead a team of 14 co-applicants and collaborators from 10 Canadian universities on a project titled "ZenithVector: Advanced Vectorization, Embedding, and Cybersecurity Analytics Toolkit for Scalable Intelligence."

The NSERC and other governmental organisations have supported Fung's research in previous projects. Holding a Ph.D in Computing Science from Simon Fraser University, he is also the Editor-in-Chief of the scholarly journal Elsevier Sustainable Cities and Society: Advances.

Project aims

The core focus of the ZenithVector project is to develop a comprehensive, multimodal solution for the exploratory analysis of large collections of unstructured data. Examples of such data include text, code, and images. The research will integrate advanced techniques to develop the building blocks required to understand, explore, and visualise collections of unstructured information in a manner accessible to human users.

Launched in 2024, the Exploratory Analysis of Unstructured Data Grant is advancing research in fundamental algorithms and tools for the exploratory analysis of large unstructured datasets. The program states that this will help develop a sustainable, open-source software ecosystem for exploratory analysis.

This new research community forms part of the NSERC-CSE Research Communities Grants program. The grants fund research on strategically advancing technologies for CSE and the Government of Canada. According to the funding site, each large project under the program will receive $1.4 million per year, while each small project will receive $700,000.

The NSERC-CSE Research Communities Grants originate from the CSE Research Initiative, a research investment commitment first announced in the Canadian budget for 2022. The initiative's focus includes advancing Canadian research in the domains of security, data analysis, and artificial intelligence.

Establishing national expertise

The initiative also supports the establishment of Canada and its universities as authorities in unstructured data analysis. Additionally, the program looks to create opportunities for the development of highly qualified Canadian personnel in the area of exploratory data analysis.

This newly announced research community is the second of four planned research groups under the NSERC-CSE collaboration. The first project, announced in July 2024, focuses on research into robust, secure, and safe artificial intelligence. It included Dr. David Lie of the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. Additionally, 18 researchers from four universities were involved in the project.