A major grant of $3.8 million from Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and the Ontario Innovation Trust (OIT) permitted a group neuroscientists in the Division of Life Sciences at the University of Toronto at Scarborough (UTSC) to undertake extensive laboratory renovations in the Fall of 2001 and purchase new sophisticated instrumentation for a collaborative approach to the contemporary health challenge of how stress affects the nervous system.

The Strategic Research Plan of the University of Toronto identified UTSC as a site for the development of a cluster of Canada Research Chairs in Neurobiology.

Professor Ian Brown, Director of the CNS, was appointed as a Tier I Canada Research Chair in the Neurobiology of Stress.

A campaign is currently in progress to raise an endowment of $4 million to secure operating funding for the CNS.