Criteria for membership:

The Large Grants panel should contain an appropriate diversity of members in terms of the following characteristics:

Part of the UK the member comes from.

A mixture of NHS dermatologists, university-employed academic dermatologists and non-clinical dermatological scientists.

Enough variety of expertise to cover the major research areas as far as possible e.g. immunology, genetic disease, cancer biology, photobiology, epidemiology, clinical trials etc.

The Small Grants panel should have members the majority of whom have sufficient experience of clinical practice and clinical research to be able to fulfil the primary aim of judging pilot projects of a clinically relevant nature. At least one member should have sufficient laboratory knowledge to be able to advise on laboratory based pilot applications.

Length of membership: membership is for 3 years of both GAC committees. At the end of the 3 year term individuals can be proposed for a further 3 year term by another panel member but not by themselves.

Appointment process to GAC:

Individuals to be proposed at the relevant GAC meeting by a member. For an individual to be proposed to the Trustees there must be no dissenting GAC member who is against the member joining the panel. The list of proposed members will be sent by the BSF Office to the Trustees, along with a list of the current GAC membership. This will also include information regarding the gaps in expertise and regional representation that require filling, how many members we are expecting to appoint and an explanation of the rationale, i.e. the reason for the need to expand (and if so, by how many members) or not expand. The Trustees will then reply with any further nominations they wish to make for GAC membership, explaining which gap in expertise or regional affiliation that person fills. The BSF Office will then compile a list of candidates for each ‘gap’ on the committee and send the list out to Trustees. If certain roles on the GAC panel are being competed for by candidates, the Trustees will email back their vote only to the BSF Office for each competed position. The BSF Office will only approach candidates after they have been successfully approved or elected by the Trustees. If candidates turn down the offered position, then the unsuccessful candidates who did not win in the Trustees’ vote will be approached in order of success in the vote and taking into account their area of expertise. If there are still problems appointing to the posts and it is felt that a space cannot be left unoccupied, the process will start again requesting other names from the GAC panel and the trustees simultaneously. The final decision regarding appointment of members to the GAC is entirely at the discretion of Trustees.

Conflict of interest:

Members are not allowed to take any part in the scoring of any grant application where there is a conflict of interest defined as:

An application primarily from an institution where you hold an honorary or substantive contract or have held one within the last two years.

An application that includes any researcher as an applicant or co-applicant who is involved in a collaborative project currently with you with whom you have collaborated within the last two years.

These conflict of interest rules are clear. Applicants must accept that the BSF GAC has a COI policy. Applicants do not have the right to request inclusion or exclusion of particular GAC panel members from the deliberations on their application.

British Skin Foundation committee members     BSF research mission