EXPLORING CHALLENGES ON THE HORIZON
As the world faces increasingly complex and interconnected challenges, CIFAR is building new ways to look ahead. Complementing our existing approaches to identifying areas where CIFAR can have the greatest impact, the CIFAR Ralph M. Barford Discovery Initiative is growing our capacity to surface critical uncertainties and interdisciplinary opportunities. We’re applying these skills to explore new programs and ensure our existing programs remain on the frontier of knowledge creation..
Building Our Foresight Capacity
Looking on the horizon is core to how CIFAR works. We supported neural networks long before the modern AI revolution, and Quantum Information Science before quantum computing became a global field, backing emerging areas many years and decades before their influence was widely recognized.
In 2025-2026, CIFAR strengthened its Challenges on the Horizon capability to help research programs identify emerging signals, questions and challenges that could shape society in the years ahead. This work also helps CIFAR determine where its unique model of long-term, interdisciplinary collaboration can make the greatest difference.
That work led to:
- 164 CIFAR community members, including Fellows, Scholars and global partners taking part in structured foresight exercises.
- The development and application of nine foresight tools and approaches to help researchers test emerging ideas and explore how their fields may evolve.
- The tools being used across nine meetings and events, including seven workshops through the CIFAR Arrell Future of Food Initiative, focused on global food security
Spotlight
Since 2007, the Metcalf Foundation has been a visionary partner in helping CIFAR look beyond the horizon towards tomorrow’s defining challenges. Their long-term philanthropy has provided foundational support for early-career researchers, first through the Global Academy (the precursor to the CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars program), and later by driving bold sustainability research through the Bio-Inspired Solar Energy / Accelerated Decarbonization program.
Today, the Metcalf Foundation continues this vital work through its support of CIFAR’s Nurturing a Resilient Earth impact cluster, empowering global, interdisciplinary teams to navigate the realities of an evolving world and create scalable solutions for a sustainable planet. “The Metcalf Foundation is immensely proud of our 20-year partnership with CIFAR. As a fellow Canadian organization dedicated to tackling complex societal challenges, we champion this extraordinary global network, whose boundary-pushing, interdisciplinary research is delivering breakthrough insights the world urgently needs.”
JAMISON STEEVE, President & CEO, Metcalf Foundation
The Future of Food Takes Shape
As part of CIFAR’s foresight work, CIFAR launched the CIFAR Arrell Future of Food Initiative in 2025. Designed as an ideato-program pipeline, the initiative uses a multi-stage discovery framework to thoroughly investigate high-risk, high-potential research fields before elevating them into long-term research programs. CIFAR first convened a global panel of experts to identify the challenges and opportunities facing the future of global food systems. Their insights culminated in the Future of Food Report, released in July 2025, which identified emerging research questions around sustainable food production, nutrition and health, and the relationship between local practices and global food systems. The report shaped a call for Discovery Workshops that drew 58 submissions from interdisciplinary teams representing 41 countries. Seven standout teams were selected to bring their work to the Discovery Workshop phase to test hypotheses and shape potential pathways for future transformative research.
Through seven CIFAR Arrell Future of Food workshops and the Discovery Panel on the Future of the Arctic, CIFAR brought researchers and partners together to examine emerging challenges.
Want to learn more? Explore CIFAR’s latest Impact Report.