2009 LEF/NIF Multidisciplinary Assessment Committees membership

 - Download List of participants

Quality and experience are the CFI’s prime considerations when selecting members for its Multidisciplinary Assessment Committees (MACs). The CFI also strives to achieve a reasonable balance in terms of language, gender, geographic location, economic sector, field of study and type of institution.

Each MAC member and expert reviewer signs a confidentiality agreement to ensure proposals are not discussed with anyone outside the committee. The CFI expects that the research community will not contact committee members for information on committee deliberations.

For the 2009 Leading Edge Fund (LEF) and New Initiatives Fund (NIF) competition, committees reviewed applications on the basis of the three criteria: quality of the research and need for the infrastructure, contribution to strengthening the capacity for innovation, and potential benefits to Canada.

Nine MACs, each composed of a chair and 9 to 12 members with broad expertise in research, technology development, research management and the use of research results, reviewed a total of 354 proposals requesting approximately $1.4 billion from the CFI. The committees met between April 21 and 23, tasked with making funding recommendations to the CFI Board of Directors.

For this competition, projects were divided according to whether they were primarily technology development or research-based in nature. Based on the number of applications in each area, one MAC reviewed the technology development projects, irrespective of the amount of funding requested, while eight committees reviewed research proposals that were assigned according to requested funding amounts. Three MACs assessed proposals requesting less than $2.5 million; three reviewed proposals ranging from $2.5 million to $7 million; and two assessed proposals requesting more than $7 million.

A Special MAC (S-MAC) met May 20 and 21 to review the MAC recommendations, which exceeded the $510 million available from the CFI. The S-MAC aimed to ensure that the nine MACs were consistent in their recommendations and chose between projects of comparable merit to ultimately select those that best supported the CFI’s mandate and the Canadian research enterprise. Informed by the MAC reports and project overviews, the S-MAC assessed excellence with full consideration of a project’s:

1. intrinsic scientific merit, as well as the likelihood that it will lead to unique and seminal advances;
2. extrinsic benefits, or the potential value to Canada of the likely outputs, outcomes and impacts of the initiative; and
3. structural merit: how the area or discipline of research or technology development would be affected by a particular project’s support, or lack of support.

2009 Special MAC