Governing Board

Mari Sundli Tveit was Deputy Director-General of the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise before leading the Research Council of Norway (RCN). Prior to that, she was Professor of Landscape Architecture and Rector of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. She has also held numerous elected positions, including as a board member at the European University Association and at the Centre for Advanced Studies of Chalmers Technical University, as well that of president of Universities Norway. She is experienced in leading large mergers, organisational integration, strategic development, and working with a large international network within academia, the business sector, and government.

Marcel Levi is president of the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and professor of Medicine at the University of Amsterdam’s Medical Center and at University College London, as well as consultant in Acute Medicine and Haematology. He has previously worked at the Universities of Perugia and Oxford, as well as the Center for Transgene Technology and Genetherapy of the Catholic University of Leuven. He currently chairs or sits on the boards of several national and international health and research organisations and charities. He is also a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Science.

Francisco Javier Moreno Fuentes is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Public Goods and Policies of the Spanish National Research Council (IPP-CSIC). He has a BA in Sociology from the Complutense University of Madrid, a Master in Social Sciences from the Juan March Institute, an MSc in Social Policy from the LSE, and a PhD in Political Science from the Autonomous University of Madrid. Between July 2018 and September 2019, he was Deputy Director of the Spanish High Commission against child poverty. He has been a researcher for the European Social Policy Network (ESPN) of independent experts on social protection and inclusion of the Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion of the European Commission since 2014. He led a significant number of research projects on welfare policies and immigration in Spain and the EU, based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. He is the (co-)author of 10 books, 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals, 37 chapters in edited books, and more than 50 reports related to his areas of specialisation. Since July 2022, he is the Vice-President for International Affairs of CSIC.

Katarina Bjelke was appointed Director General of the Swedish Research Council in 2022. She has a degree in dentistry and a PhD in neuroscience from Karolinska Institutet. She has been University Director at Karolinska Institutet, as well as at Uppsala University. Katarina Bjelke has also held roles such as Chair of the Audit Committee of the Nobel Foundation and the Swedish National Space Agency, and as an elected member of the boards of Young Academy of Sweden, the Association of Swedish Higher Education Institutions, the European Spallation Source, the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education, and several holding companies.

Adrian Curaj is Director General of the Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding of Romania (UEFISCDI). He is also the head of the UNESCO Chair on Science and Innovation Policies at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, as well as professor at the Politehnica University of Bucharest. He has worked as a consultant for the World Bank, UNESCO, UNIDO, ETF, and European Commission for studies in Tertiary Education, Science and Innovation, Foresight, and Smart Specialisation. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the US Fulbright Commission in Romania, and a fellow of the World Academy of Art & Science. He is also a former minister of education, science, and innovation.

Anna Di Ciaccio is a full professor in physics at the University of Roma Tor Vergata and a member of the Executive Committee of the European Physical Society. She is involved in research in experimental particle physics with the ATLAS experiment at CERN. She has previously worked at the University of Freiburg, at Harvard University, and at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the USA. She is a member of the Equal Opportunity Committee of the Italian Society of Physics. She was selected for the 100 Women Against Stereotypes project, an online platform collecting 100 names and CVs of female experts in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), a sector historically underrepresented by women.

Christof Gattringer is the president of the Austrian Science Fund FWF and Professor for Theoretical Physics at the University of Graz (currently on leave of absence). Previously he has served as Vice Rector of Research and Career Development and as Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Graz University. The academic career of Christof initiated with a PhD at the Werner Heisenberg Max-Planck-Institute in Munich, with subsequent PostDoc appointments at UBC Vancouver, the MIT in Boston and the University of Regensburg, as well as a sabbatical at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Matthias Koenig is professor of Empirical Macrosociology at the Max Weber Institute for Sociology at Heidelberg University. Currently, he serves as Vice President of the German Research Foundation (DFG). His research covers sociological theory, human rights, religion, and migration, focusing on global and local dynamics of governing diversity. He has held visiting scholar positions in Canada, France and the United States, and he was fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. He has sat on numerous editorial boards and councils of national or international scholarly associations.

Anu Noorma has been the Director General of the Estonian Research Council since 2021. She holds a doctoral degree in environmental physics, and is a professor of applied remote sensing at the University of Tartu. She led the Estonian space research and technology center Tartu Observatory for ten years, as well as many applied science and international collaboration projects related to the use of satellite data for aquatic environments. She has also been a member of the Estonian delegation in the Science Programme Committee of the European Space Agency.

Professor Christopher Smith is the International Champion for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and Executive Chair of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).  He has been Professor of Ancient History at the University of St Andrews since 2002, and he was also Vice-Principal (2007-2009), before being seconded as Director of the British School at Rome, the UK’s leading humanities and creative arts research institute overseas, from 2009 to 2017.

He is the author or editor of over 20 books from textual editions to museum studies.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Member of the Academia Europaea.