Contact us
If you have any questions, email: flfpanel@ukri.org
Annex A: Person specification
All applicants should:
- be committed to the career development of early career researchers and innovators and participate in career development activities of their colleagues
- have a demonstrable track record of international leadership in your field of expertise
- have deep knowledge and understanding of the research and innovation landscape in the UK and internationally (both broadly and in your own area of expertise)
- have knowledge or experience of policy or strategy development
- be understanding of the interface between academia, industry and other relevant sectors, as well as awareness of end user and developer perspectives
- have the ability to contribute creatively, constructively and strategically
Essential experience includes:
- demonstrable research, innovation or research and innovation outputs and outcomes (for example publications, funding track record or patents)
- participation on committees, boards or panels for UKRI or other funders or organisations
- experience of activities related to supporting skills and careers, this may include doctoral training, researcher or staff development and research or innovation support for teams
Desirable experience includes:
- business, innovation and investor experience
- expertise in broad multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary working
- experience of working internationally, particularly in the context of global challenges
- experience of working in a policy development environment
- experience of the development of research outputs into real world value for example, in the form of infrastructure, people, technologies, new commercial products, software, data management or standards
Additional essential experience for Chairs includes:
- experience at a senior level of chairing committees, groups or panels for UKRI or other funding organisations
- ability to ensure that decisions are robust, credible and made in an evidence-based, objective manner
- ability to champion diversity and promote inclusive behaviours on panels, supporting a culture that respects and listens to a diversity of views in reaching a consensus
- ability to ensure consistency of panel behaviour and respectfully challenge behaviour displaying a lack of regard for agreed ways of working
- experience of managing conflicts of interest in line with policies
Annex B: Future Leaders Fellowships background on panel and role requirements
Future Leaders Fellowships (FLF)
FLFs support talented people in universities, businesses and other research and innovation environments. They also allow universities, research institutes, independent research organisations and businesses to develop their most talented early career researchers and innovators or to attract new people to their organisations, including from overseas.
The aim of the scheme is to develop the next wave of world-class research and innovation leaders in academia and business. It is also open to international applicants looking to take up a role at a UK-based organisation.
Funding is available over four years both to tackle ambitious and challenging research and innovation and to develop fellows’ careers. Funding can be extended for up to a further three years to support long-term focus on a particular area of research or innovation and continued career development.
Funding is available for work in all research and innovation areas supported by UKRI.
Find out more about the FLF scheme on the UKRI website.
Role and format of the panels
UKRI FLF panels take place in two stages, enabling the allocation of FLF funding to individuals who show outstanding potential to become world leading innovators and researchers.
Our panels strike a balance between the use of expert information (provided through written expert reviews), and deploying generalist understanding to moderate and score proposals.
Rather than focusing on narrow or specialist disciplines, FLF panels are cross-disciplinary, cross-sectoral and reflect the interdisciplinary nature and open remit of the scheme. Crucially, the role of a moderating panel is to form conclusions based on interpretation of the specialist peer review reports, the applicants’ response to these reports, and panel members’ broad sectoral expertise.
Panels are bespoke and formed afresh for every meeting. Expertise required on the panels are determined by the applications we receive, and the applications that progress to interview (meaning, your expertise may be required at sift panel stage, but not at interview should no proposals in your area be taken forward).
Currently, applications from academia and from business are assessed separately at panels.
The purpose of the FLF sift panels is to shortlist competitive proposals, which will be prioritised for interview. For round 9, we anticipate a maximum of 500 proposals, which will be assessed in multiple simultaneous two-day sift panels over a period of four days (approximately 10 to 12 sift panels).
At the end of the four days, each sift panel will produce a scored and prioritised list of proposals. These lists will then be compared, to produce a list of up to 200 candidates who will be considered for interview.
The interview panels are the final assessment stage for the FLF awards. At the end of the interview stage there will be ranked and recommended lists of applications for funding. The approach taken to FLF panels is likely to be different from other UKRI interview panels you may have experienced previously.
Differences include but are not limited to:
- the structure and length of the interviews
- number of interviews per day or meeting
- size of panels
- set questions
- reflection time
- assessment criteria
- scoring practice
Therefore, if invited to participate it is essential all panel members also participate in panel briefing sessions.
Due to the scale of the funding scheme and the remit spanning all UKRI disciplines, communities, sectors and applications are assessed over multiple panels.
It is vitally important that our panel member community adhere to the unique FLF process and guidance, so that we maintain consistency and fair assessment of applicants across all panels. To assist with this, for all of our panels we use roving panel members and UKRI observers, who observe and report back on panel processes.
Panel member role
The role of panel members at both sift and interview stages is to assess a number of proposals and act as introducing members. Each proposal has three introducing members, thus your assessments will be given along with the views of others, and the panel Chair will guide the panel to reaching a consensus score.
Typically, at sift you may be asked to assess about 10 to 12 proposals, and at interview, three to six.
We ask our panel members to read the ‘Seven Principles of Public Life’ drawn up by the Nolan Committee and endorsed by Parliament. Read a more detailed description of the principles of public life on the UKRI website.
They refer to:
- selflessness
- integrity
- objectivity
- accountability
- openness
- honesty
- leadership
We expect you to be able to commit the necessary time and attention to your appointment and to have the full support or the necessary permission of your employer. The time commitment for a single round will be up to four days of meetings (two days per sift panel, two days per interview panel) plus time to attend pre-panel briefings (usually one hour, delivered on Zoom).
Other points:
- you will receive a remuneration fee of £160 per day, plus any travel and subsistence incurred
- the longest our virtual meetings are timetabled for each day is about 9:00am to 5:00pm, with several breaks
- invitation may be to either sift meeting or interview, or both
- not all panel college members will be invited to all meetings, expertise areas and balance of equality, diversity and inclusion are both factors we take into consideration when forming our panels
- we aim to make any reasonable adjustments panel members may need, so inform us of any disabilities, specific needs or caring responsibilities that may impact your involvement (we are able to pay costs incurred, such as for childcare outside normal contracted working patterns, to support panel members to attend)
Panel Chairs
As a member of the TPC, if assessed to be suitable, you may be asked to chair a panel (and on other occasions may act as panel member). The Chair’s role is to facilitate the fair and evidence-based assessment of applications and safeguard the decision making of the panel. The Chair will not act as an introducer on any specific proposals and will instead ask questions of the panel and facilitate a discussion, rather than lead on the detailed assessment of proposals.
As the Chair you will lead the panel process and facilitate discussion. You are responsible for:
- making sure that proposals are treated fairly and in line with the agreed process. In particular, you are asked to ensure that introducing members follow the published process, consider proposals against the published assessment criteria, and consistently act as a moderating panel
- taking an overview of all the proposals at the meeting, allowing you time to observe the behaviour of the panel and intervene where necessary
- ensuring panel advice has broad support of panel members and is clearly and correctly reported to UKRI
- ensuring that the panel discussion is based on the assessment criteria and the evidence provided
- challenging inappropriate or irrelevant comments and empowering other panel members to do the same
- ensuring that scores and high, medium and low designation have a clear and complete rationale behind them
- ensuring that there is a clear rationale for the final banding proposed
- keeping the panel to time
- ensuring that regular breaks are upheld so that panel members remain refreshed and focused
- attend the tensioning meeting to discuss your panel’s assessment of proposals
There is a section in the application where you can register an interest in being considered as a Chair alongside your panel member role. This is entirely voluntary and will not affect your application either way.
Next meeting dates
The FLF round 9 panel dates are as follows:
- sift panel meetings: week commencing 17 March 2025
- interview panel meetings: week commencing 12 May 2025
Annex C: survey questions
- select which research area best describes your overall expertise (drop-down list)
- provide a list summary of your areas of expertise
- provide a summary of the peer review panels, boards, advisory or strategy panels you have participated in (state whether panel Chair, Deputy Chair, panel member or other)
- provide a brief statement on your motivation to join the UKRI Talent Panel College
- provide a brief summary of your experience in supporting the career development of early career researchers and other colleagues, if relevant
- provide a brief summary of any equality, diversity and inclusion activities you are involved in
- provide a short narrative on your main achievements and impact
- would you be interested in acting as the Chair of a panel? Annex A has a person specification relating to the role of panel Chair. If yes:
- please confirm that you understand you will hold a dual-role comprising panel member and panel Chair, and that UKRI will confirm to you the role prior to each panel meeting. This is because the number of chairs needed is dependent on panel numbers, and chair selection also takes into consideration panel remit and people diversity
- please provide a summary of how you meet the essential experience for Chairs, including your experience as a committee or panel Chair to date
- are there any other details which we have not mentioned or included which you wish to tell us? If so, please add any comments into the box below.
There will also be optional questions on the topics of sex, gender identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background and disability. The confidential information obtained in this section will be used for monitoring purposes and will be stored securely in accordance with UK law and UKRI’s Data protection policy. This information will not be used for any purpose other than to periodically compare college membership to the wider academic population with benchmarks constructed from Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data.
