2. Candidates must submit their application to the online platform www.belgiancharcotfoundation-research.be  before midnight on 30 September. Paper application will no longer be accepted. The application must be written in English.  The following documents must be included in the application:

The application must also specify the use for which the requested grant will be put and justify the amount of the requested. The fund may be used for the purchase of equipment and laboratory reagents, and possibly for the recruitment of additional technical staff. The salaries of scientific staff cannot be covered.​ Secretarial costs or travel expenses are excluded and must not be taken into account. The application must specify the person nominated to receive all correspondence (hereafter referred to as the “principal investigator”).  The application must also provide details of the bank account into which the grant would be paid.  The principal investigator must state if he/she intends to finance the project solely on the basis of the BCF grant.  A project requiring a particularly high level of financial support may be staggered over two years or jointly financed with external joint funding.  If the intention is to seek additional external joint funding this must be mentioned in the application, including details of the other funding bodies.

3. The jury responsible for awarding the grants is made up of between five to seven members. It will necessarily include the Chair of the BCF who chairs the jury. The other members of the jury will be selected from the scientific committee of the BCF and the members of the Bureau of the BSGMS. A member of the jury may not be a member of a team requesting a grant nor the departmental head of this team. Each year, one or two foreign MS experts will be invited to be part of the jury. The decisions of the jury are only be valid if five or more members are present.  Written, or proxy voting is not permitted and only jury members who are physically present have the right to vote.  The jury convenes before the 15 December.  The convocation to the meeting and the applications for grants are distributed at least four weeks before the date of the meeting. The laureates are selected according to the respective votes given by the jury.  Apart from the usual criteria (originality, presentation of the project, experimental methodology, expertise, justification of costs…) the contribution that the project will make to the improvement of treatment is an important criterion. The jury is authorized to settle any unforeseen problem in the course of the meeting. Its decisions are final.

4. The beneficiaries undertake to respect the regulations governing grants awarded by the BCF.  After the allocation of grants, all correspondence must be addressed to the Chair of the Belgian Charcot Foundation.  As the grants are exclusively awarded for carrying out research programs which have been approved by the jury, the applicant is required to dedicate the entirety of the grant to this goal.  The grants (or any remaining monies from the grants) must be repaid to the BCF from such time as their use ceases to respect this requirement.  Any fundamental modification to a research program which is underway (goal of the research, use of the grants) must be subject of a new application following the same process as the original application.

5. The budgetary year begins on 1 January and comes to an end on 31 December. All materials or equipment acquired through use of a grant or provided by the CRF become the property of the individual or institution named on the invoice.  Grants intended for the payment of technical staff must be used during the current budgetary year; grants intended for the purchase of equipment or reagents, can, following justification, be accounted for in the budgetary year following the one for which the grant was allocated.  Grants allocated for either of these two uses cannot be transferred to another use.  Unspent monies must be repaid to the BCF.  Regarding the recruitment of technical staff within an institution, the principal investigator undertakes to inform such staff of the sum allocated for this purpose in order to permit, at the expiry of the grant, the termination of the employment contract or the funding of the staff by the principal investigator through other means. If the principal investigator is authorized to recruit technical staff within the framework of projects subsidised by the BCF, such recruitment must not, in any case, exceed the stated lifespan of the project and must conform to the payscales and rules in place for the research institution.  Without exception, the BCF does not recruit technical staff.

6. The principal investigator is required to send to the BCF, by post or by email, within 3 months of the end of each year: (a) the supporting documents  providing proof of the expenses incurred during the year which has just ended (original or certified true copy); (b) for incomplete programs: a preliminary report indicating the progress of the research and the part of the program still to be carried out; (c) for completed programs: a final report to which copies of the corresponding publications (in the form of manuscripts, if necessary) must be attached.

7. The grants are officially awarded at an academic session which generally takes place during the month of January.  Publications concerning the research carried out with Belgian Charcot Foundation aid shall mention the origin of the grants. At the request of the BCF, the recipients of grants may be invited to present the results of their research at scientific meetings organised by the BCF.

8. All modifications to this Regulation must be subject of prior approval by the board of the BCF.

Belgian Charcot Foundation – May 2022

Full text of the regulations is available on :