Conference Speakers

Karina Angelieva is Counsellor, Head of Sector Education and Research at the Permanent Representation of the Republic of Bulgaria to the EU. She holds Master degrees in European integration and in Contemporary History from Sofia University “Saint Kliment Ohridski”.

Frans Brom is Council Secretary and Director of the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR), and a professor of Normativity of Scientific Policy Advice at Utrecht University.

Dr Siyavuya Bulani is the Senior Liaison Officer at the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) and is in charge of the Academy’s Overseas Collaboration sub-program.

Professor Bernard Charpentier is Honorary Dean of the Faculty of Medicine Paris Sud and Chair of SAPEA (Science Advice for Policy by European Academies). He received his MD and graduated in Nephrology from Paris University School of Medicine in 1975. From 1992 until 2011 he was Head of the Department of Nephrology, Dialysis and Transplantations in the University Hospital of Bicêtre.

José van Dijck is a new media author and professor of Comparative Media Studies and former dean of the University of Amsterdam. Since 2010 Van Dijck is member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2015 she was elected by Academy members as the president of the organisation and became the first female to hold the position.

Professor Ivan Dimov is the Bulgarian Deputy Minister of Education and Science with the portfolio “High Education and Research”. His main responsibilities are the reform in the science sector and elaboration of a new strategy for research development closer to innovations, market application and economic development as well as human potential enhancement.

Professor Pearl Dykstra has a chair in Empirical Sociology and is Director of Research of the Department of Public Administration and Sociology at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Previously, she had a chair in Kinship Demography at Utrecht University (2002-2009) and was a senior scientist at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) in The Hague (1990-2009).

Prof. Elżbieta Frąckowiak is the Vice-President of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She works in the Institute of Chemistry and Technical Electrochemistry at the Poznan University of Technology, Poland.

Mariya Gabriel is the European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society since July 2017.  Within her overarching portfolio, she has as an overall objective the realisation of the Digital Single Market which should directly benefit the European citizens. 

Professor Peter W Halligan is Chief Scientific Adviser for Wales, and has extensive experience in the fields of neuropsychology, neuropsychiatry and neuro-rehabilitation.

Andy Hart is Visiting Professor of Risk Analysis Practice at Newcastle University and was previously at the UK Food and Environment Research Agency (now Fera Science Ltd.). He served for 9 years on the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) expert panel on pesticides.

Cathrine Holst is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Oslo and a Senior Researcher at ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo.

Peter Kennedy is a Professor of Microelectronic Engineering at University College Dublin and Scientific Director of Ireland’s Microelectronic Circuits Centre. He currently serves as President of the Royal Irish Academy.

Vassil Kirov, PhD (Sciences Po) is Associate Professor at the Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (ISSK-BAS) and Associate researcher at the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI). His research interests are in the sociology of enterprise, work and organisations, employment relations, digitalization and Europeanisation.

Johannes Klumpers leads the Scientific Advice Mechanism Unit (SAM) in the European Commission since its establishment in October 2015. He joined the European Commission's Directorate-General for Research & Innovation in 1998 and has worked there on topics such as renewable raw materials and industrial processes to gender, science in society, finance and budget.

Antonio Loprieno is a renowned scholar in Egyptology, Linguistics and Semitology with a special interest on science management.

Ed Noort is an outstanding scholar in the fields of Archaeology of Palestine and the literary traditions, the book of Joshua and the history of reception, hermeneutics, and historiography.

Dr Evangelia Ntzani is Chair of the SAPEA Working Group on Pesticide Toxicity Assessment, and Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology at the School of Medicine, University of Ioannina, Greece.

Susan Owens researched and published widely in the field of environmental governance, focusing on policy processes in modern democracies, relations between science and politics, and the role of knowledge, evidence, ideas and expertise in policy formation and change.

Luisa Passerini is a part-time Professor at the Department of History and Civilisation, European University Institute, Florence, and former Professor of Cultural History at the University of Turin. She has taught and conducted research in many different Universities from various countries in Europe as well as on other Continents (Africa, Australia, America)

Professor Ole Petersen is Professor of Physiology in the School of Biosciences at Cardiff University. As one of the world’s leading physiologists, he leads a research group on disease of the pancreas.  In 2008 his significant research was acknowledged by the award of CBE in the New Year Honours and election to the German National Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina, in 2010. 

Andrea Pető is a Professor in the Department of Gender Studies at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, and a Doctor of Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Author of 5 monographs, editor of 31 volumes, as well as 261 articles and chapters in books published in seventeen languages.

Alberto Quadrio-Curzio is President of the Lincei National Academy, and President of the Class of Moral, Historical and Philological Sciences. He is also Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the Università Cattolica, Milan.

Professor Julian Revalski was elected President of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in December 2016, with a mandate until December 2020. He graduated in 1981 from Sofia University with MSc in Mathematics and defended his PhD thesis in 1986 in the same University.

Iain Shepherd is a physics graduate with decades of experience working on scientific support for EU policy at the European Commission. He currently serves as Senior Expert at the Directorate General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries.

Professor Tarmo Soomere is President of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. Currently, he also serves as the Head of Wave Engineering Laboratory in the Department of Cybernetics, Tallinn University of Technology.

Dr Julia Stamm is the founder and Director of SCIENCE LEADS, and Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Futures, University of Queensland. She has over ten years of leadership and management experience in national and international academic institutions and international organisations.

Professor Günter Stock has been serving as President of ALLEA (All European Academies) since 2012. Throughout 2017 he was chair of the European academies’ SAPEA project (Science Advice for Policy by European Academies). A physiologist by training, he has held many positions in the fields of academia and industry.

Ulrike Tillmann is a mathematician who has worked in algebraic topology, K-theory, and non-commutative geometry. She serves as Vice-President of the Royal Society and she also chairs the Programme Committee of the Alan Turing Institute.

Nikolay K. Vitanov is Vice-Director of the Institute of Mechanics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Head of Department of Fluid Mechanics. Among his research interests are mathematical models of complex social systems. He is author of the book "Science dynamics and research production. Indicators, Indexes, statistical laws and mathematical models" published by Springer Publishing House in 2016.

Christiane Woopen is Professor for Ethics and Theory of Medicine at the University of Cologne. There, she is Executive Director of the Cologne Center for Ethics, Rights, Economics, and Social Sciences of Health (CERES).

Milena Žic Fuchs is Full Professor of Linguistics at the University of Zagreb and Fellow of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a member of Academia Europaea.