The president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research announced Thursday that he will resign in the fall.

The institute is Canada's biggest source of grants for medical research.

Dr. Alan Bernstein, shown in 2002, has said in the past that the Canadian Institutes of Health Research doesn't get enough funding.
(CBC)

In a letter to Health Minister Tony Clement, Dr. Alan Bernstein "indicated that he had completed what he came to Ottawa to do," the institute said in a statement.

Bernstein became the first head of the institute in 2000. The internationally recognized scientist has helped improve understanding of embryo development, stem cells and cancer.

In January, Bernstein warned a funding crunch jeopardized health research, which he blamed on the double pressure of the institute's stagnating base budget for new research projects and trying to meet the needs of researchers who are starting their careers.

"I am particularly concerned about the impact on new investigators who are at the beginning of their careers," Bernstein wrote in an open letter to the research community.

"These new investigators represent the future of health research in Canada. Failure to secure grant support for their research in those critical first years can have a lasting detrimental effect on their subsequent careers."

In Thursday's statement, Clement praised Bernstein's "exceptional leadership," both at the institute and in the health research community.

Last fall, a report tabled in the British Parliament called CIHR a world model for the organization of health research, the institute said.

Before Bernstein's appointment to CIHR, he was director of the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, and a professor of molecular and medical genetics at the University of Toronto.