About us
Our advisers

We use a range of advisers, both strategic and expert, at various stages of our investment processes.

Expert advisers deal with specific research proposals or contracts, whereas strategic advisers help us identify issues, develop investment strategies or combine findings from numerous reviews.

Advisers are chosen for their expertise and include people such as scientists, research managers, policy advisers and business people with experience in research and innovation.

They do not act as advocates for any particular interest group and must declare any potential conflicts of interest or confidentiality issues.

Strategic advisers

Investment strategy? advisory panels

Investment strategy advisory panels help our strategy managers to identify research questions for the next six years, plan strategies and position investment signals within an overall investment portfolio.

These groups are formed when necessary. Recent panels have advised on energy, food and pastoral industries strategies.

Domain review panels

Domain review panels are tailored panels of experts that provide a broad analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats affecting research, science and technology in key areas of national significance.

Members include end-users, technical experts and strategic thinkers. See Domain Review for more about this type of review.

Independent advisers

Investment concepts and proposal advisory groups

We use advisory groups, made up of independent experts, to assess applicants' concepts or proposals against our four assessment criteria.

These groups rank all concepts or proposals on a scale from highly fundable to non-fundable.

The size and composition of each advisory group will reflect the sector and portfolio under consideration.
In some cases, we call for advisory group member nominations when we release our portfolio investment strategies.

Investment balance group

Investment balance groups comprise of representatives of the chairs of advisory groups, Foundation? senior managers and other experts.

They take the rankings from the advisory groups and compare and consider them alongside a number of balance factors, such as:

• technical risk
• national capability
• balance across sectors
• basic and applied science.

From this analysis, final investment decisions are made.

Contract review panel

Medium and longer-term research contracts (up to 12 years) are reviewed periodically, typically every four years.
A review team is pulled together from experts and other Foundation advisory panel members to systematically assess the performance of a contract.

The review considers academic, scientific and technical quality as well as fit with national priorities and how well knowledge is being transferred to those who can make use of it.

Commercialisation panels

These panels are made up of entrepreneurs and commercialisation experts.

They identify high-value opportunities for products arising from investment contracts and then provide support to promote and progress opportunities towards a commercial reality.