Nuclear energy in Canada is going through a period of immense opportunities and challenges. UNENE, the University Network of Excellence in Nuclear Engineering, has pooled industry money to create, in partnership with NSERC, a number of Industrial Research Chair programs. The Toronto Chair addresses the area of materials performance, and in particular metallic corrosion. This is important to the industry for several reasons- to predict and extend the life of current plant, to aid materials selection and plant performance for new and refurbished plant, and to aid the safe management of nuclear waste and used nuclear fuel. Fundamental research will be carried out in areas of critical interest to the industry, leading to specific applications. One strand of the research deals with complex corrosion phenomena in nuclear steam generators that used to be considered high-temperature (i.e. operating) issues, but in some cases are now thought to occur during plant outages. Another area of interest is the fact that cracking of certain steel components occurs in one plant but not in another; experimental and statistical approaches will be used to probe the underlying causal factors and the risk, if any, in the apparently immune plants. Another is the ability to insert monitoring probes into used-fuel storage containers to gain confidence in their integrity. Another project within the program looks forward to new surface treatments that could be used in advanced reactor systems. Meanwhile, there is a continued emphasis on the very fundamentals of corrosion, including atomistic simulation of alloy corrosion behavior. The Chair program has wide international collaboration and links with allied areas of materials science and electrochemistry.