Investing in Young Researchers, Shaping Europe’s Future Participants’ booklet

European Parliament

Antonio Tajani is an Italian politician and the President of the European Parliament. He obtained a degree in Law from La Sapienza University, Rome. He completed his military service as an officer in the Italian Air Force. He worked as a professional journalist for more than twenty years. He was a Member of the European Parliament from 1994 to 2008. Mr Tajani was Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for Transport (2008-2010) and for Industry and Entrepreneurship (2010-2014). Since 2002 he is Vice-Chair of the European People’s Party. He was re-elected to the European Parliament in 2014 and served as one of its vice-presidents until 2016. Mr Tajani was elected President of the European Parliament on 17 January 2017. With a view to bringing Europe closer to its peoples, Mr Tajani has made restoring the primacy of politics and defending Parliament’s central role and prerogatives the guiding principles of his term of office.

Jerzy Buzek is a Polish scholar and politician, former Prime Minister of Poland (1997-2001) and former President of the European Parliament (2009-2012). Member of the European Parliament since 2004, he is currently chairing the EP's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) and the Conference of Committee Chairs. He is the European Parliament’s rapporteur for the Security of Gas Supply Regulation, and formerly also for the EU Internal Energy Market, the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan) and EU's 7th Framework Programme for Research.

Eva Kaili is an MEP and a member of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament. She is Chair of the STOA Panel, as well as Chair of the Delegation for relations with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, a member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, of the Conference of Delegation Chairs, She has, been working intensively on promoting innovation as a driving force of the establishment of the European Digital Single Market and has been particularly active in the fields of AI, blockchain technology, big data, fintech and cybersecurity. She has an undergraduate degree in Engineering from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and a Master's degree in International Relations from the University of Piraeus and has served as Member of the Greek parliament from 2007 to 2012.

Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU

Krassimir Valchev is the Bulgarian Minister of Education and Science since 2017. He has extensive experience in the field of financing of education, as well as in the evaluation and monitoring of the implementation of the European pre-accession programs. From 2003 to 2009, he served as an expert in the State Expenditures Directorate at the Ministry of Finance and participated in the development and implementation of sectoral and budgetary policies. After that, he worked as Secretary General at the Ministry of Education and Science.

European Commission

Andrus Ansip is an Estonian politician and the Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Single Market. He holds a degree in Chemistry. From 1998 to 2004, he was Mayor of Tartu. Between 2004 and 2005, he served as Minister of Economic Affairs and Communication, and from 2005 to 2014 as Prime Minister of Estonia.

Carlos Moedas is a Portuguese civil engineer, economist and politician. Currently, he serves as European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation. After graduating from Harvard Business School, he worked as Investment Banking Associate at Goldman Sachs (2000-2002) and later as consultant on mergers and acquisitions, Deutsche Bank and Eurohypo Investment Bank (2002-2004). He was Member of the Portuguese Parliament in 2011 and held the position of Secretary of State to the Prime Minister of Portugal between 2011 and 2014.

Jean-Eric Paquet began his career in the European Commission in 1993 in the Directorate-General for Transport. He was EU Ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Mauritania between 2004 and 2007. He returned to transport in 2007. As Director of the "European Mobility Network", he was responsible for Europe's transport infrastructure policy and investment strategies, the single European rail area, inland waterways and port policy. In 2015, he was appointed Deputy Secretary General of the European Commission responsible for Better Regulation and Policy Coordination. Mr Paquet is Director General of DG RTD as of 1 April 2018.

European Research Council

Jean-Pierre Bourguignon is the President of the European Research Council since January 2014. A mathematician by training, he spent his whole career as a fellow of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). He held a Professorship at École polytechnique from 1986 to 2012. He was Director of the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHÉS) from 1994 till 2013. He has served on many boards and committees and has received numerous prestigious awards.
©Photo credit: ERC

Scientific community

Jules Hoffmann is a Luxembourg-born French biologist and immunologist. He was a co-recipient of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries relating to the activation of innate immunity. He is a research director of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), where he has held various positions over the years. While Hoffmann dedicated his research to insect immunity, his work provided a vital foundation for subsequent breakthroughs in scientists’ understanding of mammalian immunity.

Martin Karplus is an Austrian-born American theoretical chemist. Since 1966, he is a Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University. His research focuses on understanding the electronic structure, geometry, and dynamics of molecules of chemical and biological interest. He was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of models to calculate the courses of chemical reactions using computers. He has also contributed to the molecular dynamics simulations of biological macromolecules, such as retinals, the visual pigments in the eye.