Mara G. Freire
Portugal
ERC - Starting Grant, CICECO, UAveiro
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Mara G. Freire graduated in Chemistry in 2003, receiving the “Best Chemistry Student Award” from Dow Portugal, and by the end of 2007 she completed her PhD in Chemical Engineering, by University of Aveiro, followed by post-doctoral research activities at ITQB2, New University of Lisbon, Portugal. During 2013, Freire was an Assistant Researcher, and since February 2014 she is a Coordinator Researcher at CICECO - Aveiro Institute of Materials, Chemistry Department, University of Aveiro, Portugal. Freire is the Coordinator of Group 5 - Biomedical and Biomimetic Materials - of CICECO, and a Member of the Young Scientists Seminar of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences. Freire has completed the supervision of 6 post-doctoral researchers, 6 PhD students, 31 MSc students and 22 BSc students, and is currently supervising 10 post-doctoral researchers, 9 PhD students, 6 MSc students and 5 BSc students.
Freire published more than 150 papers in international peer reviewed journals, five book chapters and edited one book, and has over 5500 citations (excluding self-citations) and an h-index of 48. The scientific network of Freire is supported by publications with more than 150 distinct authors with the most diverse affiliations. In addition to several best poster awards in scientific conferences, Freire was the advisor of the winner MSc thesis in the Industrial and Technology Category in the Future Ideas Thesis Competition 2014, the co-advisor of the Best PhD thesis - Mário Quartin Graça Award - in the Technologies and Natural Sciences Category in 2016, was recognized amongst the top 20 “Women in Science” in Portugal in 2015, received the ECTP-NETZSCH Young Scientist Award in 2014, and was recently recognized in the “Green Chemistry 2017 Emerging Investigators” themed issue of the Green Chemistry scientific journal.
Freire participated in 18 R&D projects with a total budget over 17M€, being the principal investigator in 2 of these projects. Currently, Freire is the principal investigator of a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC).
Biographies
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Alexandre Quintanilha
Portugal
Head of Science and Education Committee in the Portuguese Parliament
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Alexandre Quintanilha born in 9 August 1945 in Lourenço Marques (now Maputo), Mozambique. Completed his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics in 1972. He spent the next two decades at U.C. Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as professor of cell physiology and director of a Centre for Environmental Studies. He moved to the University of Porto as professor of biophysics at the Biomedical Faculty and, until very recently, director of both the IBMC and INEB.
Over the years he has chaired various committees at the European Science Foundation, the European Commission, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and several other national and international research organizations. At present, he chairs the Parliamentary Commission on Education and Science. His current interests are in the areas of biological stress, risk perception and public understanding of science.
Arnold Tukker
Netherlands
Leiden University
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Arnold Tukker is since 1 October 2013 the Professor of Industrial Ecology and Scientific director of the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) at Leiden University for 70% of his time. He retains a 30% position as senior researcher at TNO, a large Dutch not for profit research organisations. Arnold set up prominent EU projects in the field of sustainable product design (SusProNet) and sustainable consumption and production (SCORE!) and was core member of the 10 Million Euro Dutch Knowledge Network on Sustainable System Innovations.
He currently co-ordinates a string of major programs of some 15 million Euro with some 20 key European research institutes in the field of resource-efficiency, a.o. constructing world’s most ambitious and detailed global energy/resource/economic input-output databases and models (EXIOBASE). He further set up with 6 partner universities an EU Marie Curie Innovative Training Network of 15 PhDs researching the circular economy (Circ€uit). He authored 6 books, about 70 refereed papers and 7 special issues on sustainability research. He has been engaged with work of the UN on the Green Economy Initiative, the Resources Panel, the Ten Year Framework of Programs on Sustainable Consumption and Production, and Sustainable Development Goals.
Eric Gaffet
France
CNRS, University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard
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Eric Gaffet is research director at CNRS (senior scientist) and is the director of the Institut Jean Lamour (Nancy, UMR 7198 CNRS - University of Lorraine) involving 550 people in the fields of nanosciences, electronic, materials, surfaces, plasmas and metallurgy (2012 - 2017).
Eric Gaffet is (co-) authored of more than 313 publications, 464 congress participations and 2 patents in the field of nanostructured materials (Spark Plasma Sintering, Mechanically Activated Powder Metallurgy, Mechanosynthesis-Mechanochemistry, Laser Surface Treatment) Member of the Committee of Specialized Experts (CES) on Risks related to physical agents, new technologies and large developments "of ANSES (French Agency for Occupational Health and Environmental Safety), he has chaired the various nanomaterials pecialists groups gathered by the agency from 2004 until 2016. Since 2016, he is member of the Scientific Committee for Consumer Safety (European Commission).
Overall Scientific Expertise: Synthesis of nanostructured materials - powder metallurgy, powder consolidation, nano-layers (Mechanochemistry, Spark Plasma Sintering, Ultra high vacuum physical deposition), Physico – chemical Characterization of Nanomaterials (X-Ray diffraction, Scanning and Transmission Electron Microscopy, Thermal Stability), Responsible development of nanomaterials and nanotechnology (safer by design / by process, regulation).
Sigurd Wagner
United States
Princeton University, New Jersey, USA
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Sigurd Wagner is seeking to introduce fundamentally new electronic materials. He has been working in three areas: (i) new materials for solar cells; (ii) hydrogenated amorphous silicon; and (iii) flexible, conformably shaped and stretchable large-area displays, electrotextiles, and electronic skin. He is widely considered the father of the field of flexible and stretchable electronics.
Award citations speak of “groundbreaking research, both fundamental and applied, on amorphous semiconductors as well as chalcopyrites” (2009 Sir Nevill F. Mott Lecture Award, 23rd International Conference on Amorphous and Nanocrystalline Semiconductors) and “pioneering research on flexible and stretchable large-area electronics, and comprehensive study of the mechanical behavior of the same, which will be applied to various products in the near future” (2014 International Thin-Film Transistor Conference, 10th Anniversary Prize). Sigurd is a fellow of the American Physical Society, a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Senior Fellow.
Adélio Mendes
Portugal
FEUP-Porto
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Professor Adélio Mendes (born 1964) received his PhD degree from the University of Porto in 1993. Full Professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto. Professor Mendes teaches Laboratories of Chemical Engineering III and Renewable Energy I courses and coordinates the master dissertation theses in business environment.
Coordinates a large research team with research interests mainly in dye sensitized solar cells and perovskite solar cells, photoelectrochemical cells, photocatalysis, redox flow batteries, electrochemical membrane reactors (PEMFC, H-SOFC, chemical synthesis), methanol steam reforming, membrane and adsorbent-based gas separations and carbon molecular sieve membranes synthesis and characterization.
Professor Mendes authored or co-authored 280 articles in peer-review international journals, filled 23 families of patents and is the author of a textbook. In 2012 he received an Advanced Research Grant from the ERC on dye-sensitized solar cells for building integrated of ca. 2 MEuros and since 2013 he is partner in 4 more EU projects and leads one EU project. He received the Air Products Faculty Excellence 2011 Award (USA) for developments in gas separation and Solvay & Hovione Innovation Challenge 2011 prize, Ramos Catarino Innovation Award 2011-2012, ACP Diogo Vasconcelos Applied Research Award 2011 for developments is dye sensitized solar cells, City of Porto Merit Municipal Medal – Gold Degree in 2015, the Prize of Coimbra University of 2016 and prize of Scientific Excellence of FEUP 2016. Presently, he is the Coordinator of CEner-FEUP, the Competence Center for Energy of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Porto.
Ernst Wagner
Germany
LMU, Munich
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Professional Experience: 1985-1987 Postdoctoral Researcher, ETH, Zurich/Switzerland; 1988-1995 Group Leader, Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna/Austria; 1992-2001, Director for Cancer Vaccines, Boehringer Ingelheim Austria; 1995-2001 Group Leader, Institute of Biochemistry, Vienna/Austria; Since 2001 Professor (C4) for Pharmaceutical Biology-Biotechnology, LMU; 20 patents and >415 publications in the field of protein, gene and cell therapy; Since 2008 Editor, Pharmaceutical Research; Since 2016 Editor-in-Chief, The Journal of Gene Medicine;.
Educational Background: 1983 Diploma (Dipl.Ing.) in Chemistry; Technical University of Vienna; 1985 Ph. D. (Dr. tech.) in Organic Chemistry; Technical University of Vienna; 1994 Habilitation (Doz.) in Biochemistry; University of Vienna, Medical Faculty
Daniel Scherman
France
UTCBS-CNRS
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Exceptional Class Director of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS / National Scientific Research Center) - France. Date of birth: 12th July 1953. Competence fields: Drug delivery and targeting, Gene therapy, Non viral Gene delivery, In vivo imaging.
Main present and recent functions: 2002- ongoing: creator and director of the Chemical and Genetic Pharmacology Unit Partners : INSERM, CNRS, Pharmacy University, Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris (staff 40-45); 2009-ongoing : President of the Committee of “Non Viral Gene Therapy” of the European Society of Cell and Gene Therapy (ESGCT) ; Member of the Non Viral Gene Therapy Committee of the American Society of Gene Therapy (ASGT) (two 3 years terms). Founding bureau member of the “Société Française de Thérapie Cellulaire et Génique; 2008-ongoing: Member of the National Committe of the French « Centre national de la Recherche Scientifique » (CNRS).
Asunción Gómez-Perez
Spain
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
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Asunción Gómez-Pérez is Professor of Artificial Intelligence, Vice-president for Research, Innovation and Doctoral Studies, and Director of the Ontology Engineering Group at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Her research interests focus on Ontological Engineering, Semantics, Data Integration and Cognitive Systems. In 2015, she was awarded the Aritmel National Prize on Computer Science, and the 2nd edition of the National Ada Byron prize for Women in IT in Spain. She was also distinguished by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid with the Research Award in 2015. She has published more than 300 papers. Her book on ontology engineering is a reference book in the field. The wide impact of her research papers is accompanied by numerous international projects and collaborations with companies. She has coordinated 5 European projects and participated in more than 24 European projects since FP5 until H2020. She also has a long record of collaboration with companies.
Margherita Venturi
Italy
Università di Bologna
Research activity: She is currently involved in Photochemistry and Supramolecular Electrochemistry and her present research activity is dedicated to the design, construction, and characterization of molecular-level devices and machines in the frame of the bottom-up approach to nanotechnology. The importance of the development of artificial molecular machines, on which her activity is mainly focussed, is testified by the fact that this research topic was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2016.
Professional Experience: Since 2015 she is President of the Photochemistry Interdivisional Group of the Italian Chemical Society; since 2017 she is member of the Scientific Board of book series “Guide per lo sviluppo professionale degli insegnanti”. In 2017 she was nominated honorary member of the CICAP (Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims on the Pseudosciences) the honorary President of which is Piero Angela; she plays the role of referee for the following international journals: Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Chem. Commun., Chem. Eur. J., Collect. Czech. Chem. Commun., Chem. Soc. Rev., Dalton Trans., Inorg. Chem., J. Am. Chem. Soc., J. Lumin., J. Org. Chem., J. Phys. Chem., New J. Chem., Org. Biom. Chem., Org. Lett., Photochem. Photobiol. Sci., PhysChemChemPhys, Radiat. Phys. Chem.
Arlindo Oliveira
Portugal
Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa
Arlindo Oliveira obtained his engineering degree from Instituto Superior Técnico (BSc, 1986; MSc, 1989), and his PhD degree from the University of California, Berkeley (1994); His areas of interest are Algorithms and Complexity, Machine Learning, Bioinformatics and Digital Circuit Design. He worked at CERN, Cadence Laboratories and INESC-ID. Professor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of Instituto Superior Técnico (IST). President of IST and member of its executive board since January 2012. He is the author of more than 100 scientific articles and papers in conferences and of the book The Digital Mind, published by MIT Press. He has also co-authored a book on computer architecture, published in Portuguese by IST Press. Senior member of the IEEE and of the Portuguese Academy of Engineering. Notable alumnus of the Technical University of Lisbon and the Head of the Portuguese node of ELIXIR. Director of INESC-ID between 2000 and 2009.
Raja Chatila
France
Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics (ISIR)
Raja Chatila is Professor at Pierre et Marie Curie University in Paris and Director of the Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics (ISIR), as well as of the SMART laboratory of excellence on human-machine interactions. His research interests focus on autonomous robotics and interactive and cognitive robotics.
He is a member of the Commission on the Ethics of Research on Digital Science and Technology (CERNA). He is also chair of the IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in the Design of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems.
Maria da Graça Carvalho
Portugal
European Parliament
Maria da Graça Carvalho is currently member of the Unit “Scientific Advice Mechanism” of the Directorate-General Research and Innovation of the European Commission. She was a senior advisor of Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation from November 2014 to December 2015. She was a member of the European Parliament in the EPP group since July 2009 to May 2014. In the capacity she was one of the rapporteurs of Horizon 2020. She has been Principal Adviser of President Barroso in the areas of Science, Higher Education, Innovation, Research Policy, Energy, Environment and Climate Change from 2006 to 2009. She has been Minister of Science and Higher Education of the XV Constitutional Government of Portugal and Minister of Science, Innovation and Higher Education of the XVI Constitutional Government. She is a Full Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico (University of Lisbon).
She is a member of 22 national and international scientific associations and fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), of the World Academy of Art and Science(WAAS) and has been a Deputy President of the Portuguese Institute of Engineers and remains a fellow of the Portuguese Institute of Engineers, of the Portuguese Academy of Science, of the Royal Academy of Engineers of Spain and a founder of the Portuguese Academy of Engineers (she is Member number 2). She has been an active collaborator of EASAC-European Academies Science Advisory Council and the EuroCASE-European Council of Applied Sciences Technologies and Engineering since the outset.
Yvette van Kooyk
Netherlands
ERC Advanced Grant
Professor Yvette van Kooyk is head of the department Molecular Cell Biology and Immunology at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam and chairs the division Dendritic Cell Biology. She obtained her PhD in 1993 at the Medical Faculty of the University of Amsterdam, on her work performed at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, revealing pioneering molecular mechanisms that regulate immune cell adhesion through integrin activation. In 2001, she discovered the innate receptor DC-SIGN, a C-type lectin on Dendritic cells, playing a crucial role in HIV recognition and cellular immune interactions through the recognition of glycan structures. This discovery set the stage of a whole new field that led to new concepts on pathogen interactions through C-type lectin receptor that modify dendritic cell responses.
Yvette van Kooyk has (co-)authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications in international scientific journals and 13 book chapters. Professor van Kooyk has supervised 28 PhD students (1992-2017). She is a member of the Dutch Royal Society of Sciences (KNAW), rewarded the van Loghem award for life time achievements in field of Immunology. She is director of the Amsterdam Infection and Immunity research Institute AI&II. She is also inventor on 4 patents and is Chief Scientific Officer of the start-up biotech company DC4U.
Tim Vogels
United Kingdom
University of Oxford, FENS Kavli Network of Excellence in Neuroscience
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Prof Tim Vogels studied physics at Technische Universität Berlin and neuroscience at Brandeis University as a Fulbright Scholar. He received is PhD in 2007 in theoretical neuroscience. After a postdoctoral stay as a Patterson Brain Trust Fellow at Columbia University, he became a Marie Curie Reintegration Fellow in the laboratory for Computational Neuroscience at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Tim was awarded the Bernstein Award for Computational Neuroscience in 2012. He arrived at Oxford in 2013 and established a research group in theoretical and computational neuroscience within the Centre of Neural Circuits and Behaviour. As a computational neuroscientist, he builds conceptual models to understand the fundamentals of neural systems at the cellular level. Together with Rafal Bogacz he rejuvenated neurotheory at the University of Oxford. His research group is funded by a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship of the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society. Dr Vogels is part of the FENS Kavli Network of Excellence in Neuroscience since 2014.
Luís Pereira
Portugal
ERC - Starting Grant, CENIMAT/i3N, FCT|NOVA
Prof. Luis Pereira was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1977. He received the Engineering degree in Materials Science in 2001 and has finished the Ph.D. in Microelectronics and Optoelectronics Materials in 2008 at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. His Ph.D. work was focused on polycrystalline silicon and high k dielectrics for TFT’s application.
The expertise gained on oxide materials for electronics allowed focusing the pos-doc activities on the development printed inorganic nanostructured materials for chromogenic, electronic and electrochemical devices on paper and plastic substrates. He was involved in the team that demonstrated for the first time transistors made of oxides with paper as dielectric. He has authored and co-authored 156 publications in peer-reviewed journals and proceedings of the ISI with more than 3500 citations and has a H factor of 32.
He is currently a researcher at CENIMAT/I3N coordinating and participating in R&D projects and has been granted in 2015 with a Starting Grant of the European Research Council on the development of cellulose nanocomposites for paper electronics (New-Fun, project 640598). His current research interests are on the design and synthesis of 1D, 2D and 3D inorganic and hybrid nanostructures, chiral cellulose nanocomposites, functional micro and nanofibers and it integration on chromogenic, electronic and electrochemical devices.
Pedro Barquinha
Portugal
ERC - Starting Grant, CENIMAT/i3N, FCT|NOVA
Pedro Barquinha (born 1980) received the Ph.D. degree from Universidade Nova de Lisboa in 2010, in Nanotechnologies and Nanosciences, with the dissertation “Transparent Oxide Thin-Film Transistors”. He is an Assistant Professor at the Materials Science Department of FCT-UNL since 2012, lecturing the courses of Nanofabrication and Characterization of Nanostructures, Flat Panel Displays, Microlectronics and Materials Characterization Techniques.
His work in oxide electronics spans many areas, from the design, deposition and characterization of multicomponent oxides, fabrication and characterization of oxide TFTs, to their integration in analog and digital circuits on flexible substrates. He is co-author of more than 120 peer-reviewed papers, with more than 5300 citations (h-index=33, as July 2017). He co-authored 2 books and 4 book chapters on this area as well. He won important scientific prizes, such as the “Stimulus to research 2008” (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation) and “Innovation Prize for Young Engineers 2008” (Portuguese Order of Engineers) and gave more than 40 invited lectures including 2 key-notes in international scientific conferences and workshops. He was program coordinator in ITC2012 conference and co-organizer of the 1st E-MRS/MRS- J Bilateral Symposia, “Materials Frontier for Transparent Advanced Electronics”. Since 2004 he participated in more than 30 research and innovation projects, mostly focusing oxide semiconductors, TFTs and circuit integration, both by physical and solution processing routes. He is currently principal investigator from FCT-UNL on two EU projects (H2020 Roll-Out and H2020 1D-Neon).
His current research focus is to take oxide electronics to performance and integration levels suitable for future ICTs. This involves pursuing low temperature synthesis routes of high quality oxide nanostructures and integrating them in nanodevices and circuits, always complemented by device modeling/simulation. In 2016 he got an ERC Starting Grant (TREND) to advance this research topic.
Sierd Cloetingh
Nederlands
President of the Academia Europaea
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Sierd Cloetingh is Utrecht University Distinguished Professor. His research field is Earth Sciences. He published more than 335 papers in international peer-reviewed journals (11560 citations, h-index 59) and has been promotor of more than 75 PhD students of 18 different nationalities.
Currently he serves as President of the Academia Europaea and President of the COST Association.
In addition, he is Editor-in-Chief of the international journal "Global and Planetary Change" and Chairman of the TOPO-EUROPE collaborative research program.
Past functions include Membership of the Scientific Council (2009-2015) and Vice-President of the European Research Council (ERC), President of the International Lithosphere Program (2004-2017), President of the European Geophysical Society (1998-2000) and Professor of the Royal Netherlands Academy for Arts and Sciences (KNAW, 2006-2015).
Sierd Cloetingh received honorary doctorates from five European universities and numerous medals and awards. He is member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, the Royal Norwegian Academy, the Royal Danish Academy, the German national Academy for Technical Sciences, the Heidelberg Academy, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He was distinguished in 2006 as Chevalier de Legion d'Honneur and in 2014 as Knight of the Royal Order of the Netherlands Lion for his contributions to science and European scientific cooperation in research and education.
