COFUND: Can the supervisor be involved in any way in the selection process or should they be kept out entirely?

Supervisors cannot be involved in the selection process during its early phases. The key is to avoid any possible risk of pre-selection as the process has to be open, fair and transparent.

PF: A researcher is applying for Postdoctoral Fellowships and their supervisor will potentially act as evaluator in the same call, and in the same panel. Is this a conflict of interest? What should be done?

The researcher may always go ahead and submit the proposal as is. They do not need to take any action.

Supervisor-to-be, if selected for evaluation, should ideally inform the REA of the situation beforehand and may expect to be asked to step down from the entire evaluation exercise or perhaps only from the evaluation of proposals submitted to the panel to which this particular proposal is submitted.

If the researcher wants, they can look for a different supervisor.

COFUND: How should an applicant describe the qualifications and experience of the supervisors if they don't yet know who the supervisors will be? (for example, if a COFUND has a large pool of potential implementing organisations and as such, a large pool of potential supervisors)?

Some implementing partners should be known and in this case the description should be given at the institutional level.