Governing Council - Institut des Sciences du Cerveau, de la Cognition et du Comportement de Toulouse (ISC3T)

The Governing Council determines actions to be carried out on a monthly basis. It is composed of elected representatives for each of TMBI’s 10 main fields, with one full member and an alternative, together with the director (Simon Thorpe) and a deputy director (Nicholas Asher). One elected member represents those with non-permanent positions (PhD students, Postdocs, and Support Staff) and another represents TMBI Masters students, a total of 14 in all. The current composition is shown in the figure.

tmbigovernance

We used a very innovative system for electing representatives for each area. Rather than asking for volunteers, we used a totally bottom-up procedure. All TMBI members interested in a given field can vote but are automatically potential candidates. The voting was totally automated and anonymous using “Balotilo” which sends emails to voters with a personalized link for voting and a prespecified deadline. In the first round of voting, each person chose 3 names and those with support from at least 10% of those who voted were asked if they wanted to candidate for the second round. For that, people could just vote for 2 names, and the two candidates with the most votes were elected to the Governing Council.

This mode of election has number of interesting points. First, it encourages people who spontaneously would not be a candidate but can often be more consensual. Second, since people can vote for all areas that interest them (maximum 10), more interdisciplinary people will have a greater influence on the composition of the council.

The elections took place between the 28th November and the 7th December 2016. The Direction and the Elected Representatives for the 10 core areas in TMBI are as follows:

Director