Scientific Advisory Committee

The Neurological Foundation SAC is a 12 member committee composed of clinical neurologists, neurosurgeons, psychologists and neuro-scientists, each with many years of research experience, together with a representative from the Council and Council Chairman of the Neurological Foundation. The 10 clinicians and scientists are drawn from hospitals and universities throughout New Zealand and generally serve on the SAC for 3-6 years. The SAC meets each June on behalf of the CatWalk Trust to consider applications and make recommendations to the Grants Approval Committee. All members of the SAC review all applications to the Trust and individual SAC members prepare a report on applications that fall within their area of expertise.

The project application is also reviewed and scored by at least 5 independent experts in a field (usually from overseas) and their comments are factored into the SAC member’s report.

At the SAC meeting reports on the individual proposals are presented and debated and a vote is taken to approve the application or not. If the majority are in favour of funding a research project, each SAC member then scores the application according to the view of its merit and these scores are used to rank the research proposals. Once the applications have been considered they are tabulated in order of merit and amount required to fund them.