How Grants are Approved

BRACE will fund a research project only after the proposal has been subjected to a rigorous review process.

The charity has its own Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC), which works independently to assess each application on scientific merit alone. Final decisions about grants are taken by the Trustees, who will also consider the availability of funds.

As each application is received, it is subjected to triage by the SAC and, if it meets the basic criteria for consideration, will be circulated for peer review. The reviewers must be fully independent of the applicants, and may be located abroad as well as in the UK. Applicants are asked to nominate five reviewers, and the SAC will consider these nominees as well as experts that it has identified. The SAC will normally require at least three reviews before it will discuss the proposal and make a recommendation to the Trustees.

The SAC currently has the following members:

Trustees

  • Dr John Pounsford (Chair)

Non-Trustees

  • Professor Kei Cho - Professor of Neuroscience, King's College, London
  • Dr Lorenzo More - Senior Lecturer in Neuroscience, University of Central Lancashire
  • Professor Payam Barnaghi - Chair in Machine Intelligence Applied to Medicine, Imperial College London
  • Professor Maeve Caldwell - Professor in Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin
  • Dr Charlie Arber - Senior Research Fellow, University College London
  • Dr Eric Hill, University of Loughborough
  • Professor Nancy Zook - Associate Professor of Psychology, University of the West of England
  • Professor Wendy Noble - Professor of molecular Neurobiology, University of Exeter 
  • Professor Zafar Bashir - Professor of cellular Neuroscience, University of Bristol

All members of the SAC will be consulted about every application unless they have a conflict of interest. Non-trustee members of the SAC are eligible to apply for grants but will be excluded from all stages of the approval process of their own application.

BRACE is a member of the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC)

Page last updated May 2024

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