The review board members elected for the 2012-2015 membership period received their letters of appointment in mid-February 2012. The 48 new review boards were constituted in meetings between March and May 2012.
More than 110,000 researchers were eligible to vote in the 2011 review board election. From 7 November to 5 December 2011, they had the opportunity to vote online for their preferred review board candidates in the 2012 to 2015 membership period in one of the biggest online elections in the world. Around 38.2% of the electorate took part in the election. A total of 1841 candidates were nominated for the election, of which the DFG Senate selected 1385. 95 DFG member institutions, 267 scientific associations and faculty associations, 300 or so Leibniz prizewinners and the Donors’ Association for the Promotion of Sciences and Humanities in Germany (Stifterverband) were all entitled to nominate candidates.
In the 48 newly elected review boards for the 2012 to 2015 membership period consisting of a total of 606 elected people, 381 researchers represent their disciplines for the first time; 225 members were already part of a review board in the previous period. From the DFG’s perspective, it is great to see the number of women in the review boards rise to 20.8%. This figure was 16.8% following the election in 2007. The final result of the 2011 review board election was ascertained in line with Section 9 No. 9 Clause 3 of the Election Regulations by a notice sent to the DFG Senate on 8 February 2012. It was published on the DFG website on 9 February 2012 and replaced the preliminary election result published there shortly after the election deadline on 8 December 2011. For the newly elected spokespersons, work in these important DFG statutory bodies began with the constitutive meetings in spring 2012. Each constitutive meeting signalled the end of the review boards’ 2008 to 2011 membership period.