Speakers

Katja Becker, President of the German Research Foundation (DFG), studied medicine at Heidelberg University, where she obtained her doctoral degree and habilitation. She held positions at the Center for Infectious Diseases, Würzburg University and accepted a chair in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at Giessen University.

Olivia Denk (Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences) is a specialist in Open Science and leads the open research data unit at the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences in Bern. In this role, she is responsible for implementing the Swiss National Open Research Data Strategy on behalf of her organisation. Since 2023, she has served as co-coordinator of CoARA’s National Chapter Switzerland.

She has held positions as an assistant professor at Ilisimatusarfik and as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Davis, where she collaborated on research and teaching around the microbiology of Indigenous Greenlandic fermented foods.

Assoc. Prof. Hauptmann’s work emphasizes the significance of traditional animal-source Inuit foods in understanding human-microbe interactions and promoting food sovereignty. She has been an active public debater for more than a decade, currently focusing on Indigenous food systems and the role of Indigenous peoples in science. Her work not only advances scientific understanding of Arctic microbiology but also bridges cultural and societal aspects, promoting the integration of Indigenous knowledge into scientific research.

“For those of us who live in the Arctic, it is increasingly clear that science is diplomacy. In a time where the mantra of Greenland’s government as well as our national research strategy is ‘Nothing about us without us’ it will be the scientific communities who manage to build equitable and long-term relations with Arctic collaborators who can do science in the Arctic.”

Monika Szkarłat (PhD) is a specialist in international relations and a researcher at the Institute of Political Science and Administration, as well as the head of a research team at the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Computer Modeling, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland. She holds a degree in intellectual property law from the Faculty of Law and Administration at Jagiellonian University in Kraków.

Dr. Szkarłat is a delegate to the Board of the Polish Polar Consortium, a member of the Presidium of the Committee on Polar Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences, and vice-chair of the Social & Human Working Group of the International Arctic Science Committee. She is also actively engaged in ICARP IV as a member of RPT4 (Diplomacy and Scientific Collaboration).

Her research focuses on the intersection of science and policy, particularly science diplomacy in the Arctic and the EU, as well as the legal and social dimensions of artificial intelligence and biotechnologies.

 

“International research collaboration has long been fundamental to the Arctic, providing essential knowledge on natural phenomena and their socio-economic implications while informing decision-making at national and international levels. During periods of geopolitical tension, science has also functioned as a track-two diplomacy platform, maintaining dialogue when political channels were closed. Yet, science, along with its products—technologies and innovations—can also be a source of power, competition, and even coercion. While the relationship between science and politics can be mutually beneficial, science must safeguard its integrity, resisting politicization and instrumentalization to ensure its role remains independent and constructive in Arctic governance.”

Prof Lise Øvreås – serves as a Vice-President (Environment Programme; External Stakeholders and Partner Engagement) of EASAC from 2024–2026. She is a professor in Geomicrobiology at University of Bergen, Norway. Former President of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Norway (DNVA). She has been active in working with science for policy in the Arctic and in EU, though Science advice committee at DNVA and EASAC.  From 2019 – 2022 she was the director for Ocean Sustainability Center at University of Bergen, a strategic tool to provide research and meeting place for a sustainable ocean. She is also part of the Norwegian UN Ocean National Committee. She has been an active researcher within Arctic research for the last 25 years, attending research cruises and fieldwork, studying biodiversity and the effect of climate change. She held an associate professor position at University center in Svalbard (UNIS) for 8 years, teaching Arctic microbiology. She is particularly interested in the effect of thawing permafrost and climate gas emissions. She is also engaged in implementing artificial intelligence in Arctic fieldwork and “smart sampling”.

 

“Science and diplomacy have long been central to Arctic governance, fostering cooperation in a region that is ecologically fragile and geopolitically significant. Loss of data following Russia’s war on Ukraine, Trump administration’s cuts to research and retreat from multilateralism, and increasing investment of non-Arctic states in Arctic research are altering the foundations of scientific collaboration and diplomacy. These disruptions undermine science-informed decision-making and international cooperation, particularly in climate and biodiversity research, social science, and ocean studies. Thus, revitalizing Arctic science diplomacy is essential—not only for the region but for addressing broader planetary challenges, from climate change to security and resource management.”

 

 

Prof Dr Viola Priesemann is a Board Member of “Die Junge Akademie”, professor of Physics at the Georg-August University and group leader at the Max-Planck-Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organisation in Göttingen.  She is a member of the Board of the Campus Institute for Data Science, the Cluster of Excellence ‘Multiscale Bioimaging’, the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Her research focuses on living and artificial neural networks, carving out the basic mechanisms of self-organisation, learning, and efficient coding.  

During the Covid-19 pandemic, she brought together and coordinated a transdisciplinary team of researchers to develop coordinated mitigation strategies. This team published several papers in The Lancet, including a practicable, transdisciplinary ‘Action Plan for Pan-European Defense against new SARS-CoV-2 variants.’ Within integrating researchers from small countries and disciplines this endeavor reflects the very values of European unity, transdisciplinary research, and the promotion of an open and inclusive science advancement in Europe. 

Prof. Minik Thorleif Rosing (Greenland/Denmark) is a world-renowned geologist from Greenland. Among many titles and accomplishments, he is a professor of geology at the University of Copenhagen, previous leader of Danish ship-based scientific research expedition Galathea 3, and one of the artists behind Icewatch—a series of melting glacier ice blocks positioned in clock-formation outside notable places of governance.

Prof. Annette Grüters-Kieslich (Leopoldina and The Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities) is ALLEA Vice-President and Board Member.

Prof. Marie Louise B Nosch (Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters) is ALLEA Vice-President and Board Member.

Nils Agerhus is the Director General at the Ministry of Higher Education and Science, a position he has held since 2017. He previously served as Director at the Agency for Higher Education (2013–2016), and held several leadership roles within the Ministry, including Head of Department (2009–2013) and Head of Division (2001–2009). Prior to that, he was Head of Division and Advisor at the Ministry of Enterprise (1992–2001). He began his career as a project worker at the Aalborg Trade Council (1990–1992).

Susanne Ditlevsen is a professor of statistics at the University of Copenhagen and President of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. Her research spans theoretical and applied statistics and mathematics, with a focus on stochastic processes, nonlinear dynamics, and mathematical modeling in biology. Her interdisciplinary work has applications in climate science, ecology, and neuroscience.

She gained international recognition for a 2023 Nature Communications on the potential collapse of a major Atlantic Ocean current due to climate change—a study that garnered global media coverage.

Susanne holds degrees in mathematics and statistics and a PhD in biostatistics from the University of Copenhagen. Beyond academia, she has a background in acting and theatre, and frequently contributes to public science communication in major media outlets.

Ewa Dębska is a Polish diplomat and philologist, currently serving as Chargé d’affaires a.i. and Head of Mission at the Embassy of Poland in Denmark since October 2024. A graduate in Danish Philology from Adam Mickiewicz University, she began her career as a translator and lecturer before joining the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1999.

Her diplomatic career includes postings in Denmark, Sweden, and Latvia, where she served as Ambassador to Latvia (2015–2017). She has held various roles in the Ministry, primarily focused on European policy and regional cooperation, especially with the Nordic, Baltic, and Visegrad countries. She has also represented Poland in the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region and the Council of the Baltic Sea States.

Ewa Dębska is a career diplomat and civil servant, awarded the Golden Cross of Merit (Poland) and the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana (Estonia). She speaks Danish, English, and German.

Matthias Kiesselbach  is Director of the division “Research Culture” in the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG). Among other things, he coordinates DFG’s membership in CoARA. Together with his colleague Dr Anna Christa, representatives of the EU Commission and the Swedish Knowledge Foundation, Matthias currently co-chairs the CoARA Working Group “Improving Practices in the Assessment of Research Proposals”

Mira Söderman is Coordinator on Responsible Assessment at the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies. She coordinates the Steering Group and Working Group on Responsible Assessment, as well as the Finnish National CoARA Chapter. She holds a PhD in Political Science.

Since May 2023, Erzsébet has been the Programme Manager of CoARA. She is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Coalition and coordinates the CoARA Boost Horizon project. Erzsébet has a solid background in Open Science and research assessment in the Arts and Humanities disciplines.

Before joining CoARA, she was the first Open Science Officer for DARIAH-EU where she promoted and implemented policies and practices related to the open dissemination of research results, such as OPERAS-P and PALOMERA.

Erzsébet obtained her PhD in Cognitive Linguistics at the Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest. In recent years, her professional interests and publication activities have been shifting towards the study of data sharing, publication and evaluation practices, such as FAIR data in the Humanities, quality assessment of innovative scholarship in the Social Sciences and Humanities and evaluation and peer review challenges around Virtual Research Environments.

Birger Larsen (Aalborg University) has a passion for research that involves the activities, processes, and experiences arising in the meeting between users, information, and information systems in a given context – with the goal of optimising these to empower users in their task and problem-solving. His main research interests include Information Retrieval (IR), user interaction, information behaviour, domain specific search, understanding user intents and exploiting context in IR – all of these with a view to inform interaction design and user experience (UX), as well as Informetrics/Bibliometrics, citation analysis and quantitative research evaluation – and recently computational methods applied to Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), where he investigates the new possibilities and challenges arising from the application of large-scale data collection and analysis techniques and AI to SSH research.

Søren Serritzlew is the Chair of the Board of Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF). He was a member of Independent Research Fund Denmark’s academic research council DFF | Social Sciences from 2018-2023. He is also a professor at the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University.

 

Alan Irwin is a professor in the Danish Centre for Studies in Research and Research Policy, Aarhus University, and in the Department of Organization, Copenhagen Business School. He is also a Distinguished Affiliated Professor at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). He chairs the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters committee on ‘science in society’. Alan Irwin’s academic work focuses on issues of science and technology policy, scientific governance, citizen science and science-public relations. He was a member of the working group which produced the SAPEA evidence review report on ‘Making sense of science for policy under conditions of complexity and uncertainty’ (2019).

Professor Dr. Ulla Bonas' research is focused on the genetic and molecular analysis of pathogenicity and plant disease resistance in the Xanthomonas/plant interaction. She is Vice-President of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina since 2015.

Nienke Buisman is deputy Director International Cooperation in Research and Innovation since 2021 and Head of Unit International Cooperation Policy in the European Commission, Directorate-General Research & Innovation since 2019.

Janneke Gerards is professor of fundamental rights law at the Montaigne Centre for Rule of Law and Administration of Justice of Utrecht University (the Netherlands). She conducts research mainly in the fields of European fundamental rights, judicial review and new technologies.

Fabiola Gianotti is an experimental particle physicist. Since 1 January 2016 she is Director-General of CERN and is the first to be reappointed for a full second term in CERN's history. She has worked on several experiments at CERN, covering detector R&D and construction, software development and data analysis. A large part of her activity was devoted to the search for the Higgs boson.

Valeska Huber has been Tenure Track Professor at the Institute of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna since 2022. She previously headed the Emmy Noether Group Reaching the People: Communication and Global Orders in the Twentieth Century at Freie Universität Berlin and worked as a Research Fellow in Global and Colonial History at the German Historical Institute London.

Iliana Ivanova is the European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth. She previously served as Member of the European Court of Auditors (2013 – 2023), as Member of the European Parliament (2009 – 2012) and as a Member of Sofia City Council (2007 – 2009).

Lara Keuck is a professor for history and philosophy of medicine at Bielefeld University and leads an independent Max Planck Research Group on Practices of Validation in the Biomedical Sciences at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin.

Professor Antonio Loprieno became the President of ALLEA, the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, in May 2018. Antonio Loprieno studied Egyptology, linguistics and Semitic studies at the University of Turin in Italy. Among other positions, he served as President of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences (2018-2019), President of the Jacobs University Bremen (2019-2020).

Christoph Markschies studied Theology, Classics and Philosophy at the Universities of Marurg, Munich, Tübingen, and in Jerusalem. His research focus is on Ancient Christianity.

Henry Marx is the State Secretary for Higher Education and Research of the state of Berlin. As deputy head of the Senate Department he is responsible for all political and administrative decision of the government in Berlin.

Prof. Dr. Hermann Parzinger is President of the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz/SPK (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) since 2008. Consisting of 25 museums, libraries, archives, and research institutions, the SPK is one the largest cultural institution in the world.