C$75,000 Westbury Award Opens for Calgary-Led Melanoma Research

The Arnie Charbonneau Cancer Institute is offering C$75,000 for a single Calgary-led melanoma research project through the Robert C. Westbury Award in Melanoma Research 2026. One award. One team. And a hard deadline of December 15, 2026, at 4 p.m., with the funding decision expected in March 2027.

For dermatology and oncology investigators in Alberta, this is one of the few local funding streams with an explicitly exclusive melanoma mandate — the project must have a clear melanoma focus to qualify.

What kind of research qualifies?

The scope is deliberately broad. Funded work may investigate:

• melanoma biology
• prevention
• detection
• treatment
• metastasis
• quality of life for patients

Translational, clinical, health services and population health approaches are all welcome. The institute encourages multidisciplinary collaboration and, notably, patient involvement in the research design. Teams can include collaborators from outside Calgary, but the project lead must be Calgary-based.

Who can apply?

Eligibility hinges on institutional anchoring. The principal applicant must hold an academic appointment — including an adjunct appointment — at the University of Calgary or at Cancer Care Alberta / Alberta Health Services. Applicants must be Charbonneau Institute members, or apply for membership alongside their submission, which lowers the barrier for first-time applicants.

The institute explicitly encourages new and junior investigators to apply. That's a signal. Competitions that name junior researchers in their guidelines tend to weigh career stage in review, so an early-career clinician-scientist with a focused melanoma question should not assume the award is out of reach.

There are structural limits, though. An investigator may lead only one proposal, but can participate in additional applications as a co-investigator. And the funding must support novel work — it cannot duplicate existing grant support, so applicants need to show how the Westbury funds extend rather than repeat what they already hold.

What does the money look like in practice?

The C$75,000 award comes with a 24-month spend window. Teams that need more time can request a one-time, 12-month no-cost extension, giving a maximum effective project runway of three years.

Submission is straightforward: email the completed application to [email protected]. One caveat worth flagging for planners — the guidelines do not specify the deadline's time zone, so applicants outside Mountain Time should confirm before cutting it close on December 15.

Why it matters for the field

Melanoma research funding at this level rarely comes with this much design freedom. The award accepts everything from basic biology through health services and population health, which means a dermatologist studying early detection pathways competes on equal footing with a translational lab pursuing metastasis mechanisms.

The patient-involvement language also matters. Reviewers are increasingly scoring engagement plans, and applicants who build patient partners into the proposal from the start — rather than as an afterthought — align with what the institute says it wants to fund.

With one award and a March 2027 decision, the competition will be selective. But for Calgary-based investigators sitting on a novel melanoma idea that existing grants don't cover, this is a clean, single-application opportunity — and the membership-plus-submission option means the door is open even to those not yet inside the Charbonneau network.