Welcome to the Fulbright Canada website.The site provides the most up-to-date information on our programs, events, and activities, and integrates all of our Fulbright offerings, as well as information on our various broad mandate programs, including the Killam Fellowships Program, the Fulbright Canada - MITACS Globalinks Fellowship, the Fulbright Canada Entrepreneurship Initiative and the Fulbright Canada - Maple Leaf Foundation Exchange. It is also meant to introduce you to our grantees, alumni, partners, Board of Directors, and my colleagues at the Secretariat.
The year 2026 marks the 80th anniversary of the Fulbright Program. For eight decades, the program has supported hundreds of thousands of remarkable students, scholars, researchers, artists, and community leaders and has defined and refined the notion of public diplomacy. Signed into law on August 1, 1946, the program has, for some eight decades, been the gold standard of academic exchange, a testament to the importance of innovative and purposeful academic research, and a vehicle for supporting and encouraging future leaders. It connects people, communities and nations.
Today, Fulbright is a global public–private partnership dedicated to supporting the best and the brightest by offering merit-based exchange opportunities for exceptional students, scholars, artists, teachers, and professionals from all backgrounds. Notable alums include Ada Louise Huxtable, an architecture critic who was the voice and conscience of architecture for decades, award-winning poet and novelist Sylvia Plath, electrical engineer and sound pioneer Amar Bose, and former president of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) James Orbinski. Of the more than 450,000 alums, 63 have been awarded Nobel Prizes, 83 are MacArthur Fellows, and 93 have won the Pulitzer Prize.
Fulbright Canada was established in 1990, strengthening one of the world’s most dynamic bilateral relationships and opening new opportunities for scholars, students, and professionals on both sides of the border. Over the decades, Fulbright Canada has grown into a vibrant network of thinkers and leaders whose work transcends disciplines and geographies. Its timeline is marked by expansion, new awards, new partnerships, and new areas of inquiry, but its mission has remained constant: the Fulbright Program was, and is, about a commitment to excellence, innovation, opportunity, access, and social connectedness. These are our values.
I find their stories inspirational and their contributions remarkable.
While all sites are informational, this site also serves as a celebration of extraordinary individuals and their accomplishments. Mostly, these are students and scholars, researchers and teachers, but they can also be university administrators, government officials, leaders in the NGO community, and other friends of Fulbright. They come from all walks of life, and they study and conduct research in all areas - from poetry to physics. They come from every ethnic and social group, they speak many different languages, and they hail from every corner of our two countries. What they have in common is a commitment to make the world a better place, to contribute in a meaningful way to the public policy debate, and to engage with their local communities, as well as a desire to deepen our understanding of both the physical and the social world. Through their journey, they have come to a more sophisticated appreciation of what President John Kennedy meant when he told the Canadian Parliament that "geography has made us neighbours, history has made us friends, economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies".
As a proud alumnus of the program (Fulbright Distinguished Research Chair, UC Berkeley, 1999-2000), I can relate directly to their experiences, and I understand just how transformative such an experience can be. I find their stories inspirational and their contributions remarkable. I encourage you to learn more about them. You may want to visit our searchable interactive Fulbright Canada Alumni Database and our Killam Fellows database.
I hope you find the information you are looking for here, consider applying to one of our programs, and enjoy these stories. They are, each in their own way, a testament to the lasting value of investing in our common future and a reminder that exchanges led to greater mutual understanding.
Please feel free to contact me directly or any of my colleagues at the Foundation.
Biographical information for Michael Hawes.