Thursday 5 April 2018

Conference opening and Plenary I: Universities in knowledge societies

Rolf Tarrach
President, European University Association

Rolf Tarrach was Rector of the University of Luxembourg from 2005 to 2015. He studied physics at the University of Valencia and obtained his PhD from the University of Barcelona. Rolf Tarrach subsequently served as a postdoctoral researcher at CERN, Geneva, and was a professor of theoretical physics at the Universities of Valencia and Barcelona. He has published more than 100 papers and two books and has been honoured with a honoris causa degree from the University of Saint Petersburg, Russia. He is the recipient of eight official prizes and was Dean of the School of Physics and Vice-Rector of the University of Barcelona. Rolf Tarrach is the former president of CSIC Madrid (the Spanish Scientific Research Council) and a former member of the European Union Research Advisory Board, of the European Heads of Research Council group which he also chaired and of the five-year assessment panel of experts of the European Commission. He has been a co-organiser of the first three EuroScience Open Forums (ESOF). In 2008, he became President of the Academic Cooperation Association (ACA) and was Vice-Chair of the jury of the French Initiative d’excellence from 2011 to 2012, which he is again (2015-2017). Rolf Tarrach continues to be a professor of physics at the University of Luxembourg. He has been Council Member of the European University Association (EUA) for ten years.


Michael Hengartner
Rector, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Michael Hengartner studied biochemistry at the Université Laval in Québec. After earning his PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Nobel laureate H. Robert Horvitz, he worked as head of a research group at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the United States from 1994 to 2001. In 2001, he was appointed Professor for Molecular Biology at the newly created Ernst Hadorn Chair at the Institute of Molecular Life Sciences, University of Zurich (UZH). From 2009 to 2014, he acted as dean of the Faculty of Science. In 2014 he was appointed Rector of the University of Zurich. Since 2016 he also acts as the President of swissuniversities. Michael Hengartner holds an Executive MBA from IMD Lausanne and is the recipient of several awards for his groundbreaking research on the molecular basis of apoptosis, among them the Swiss National Latsis Prize. In 2010 he was awarded the Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching at UZH, whereas in 2016 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Pierre and Marie Curie and University of Paris-Sorbonne.

Ulrike Felt
Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Vienna, Austria

Ulrike Felt is Professor of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and head of the interfaculty research platform “Responsible Research and Innovation in Academic Practice” at the University of Vienna. Since 2014 she has served as Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and will do so until September 2018.  She was founding director of the international English language Master “Science, Technology, Society”. She earned her PhD in Physics (minor Mathematics) from the University of Vienna in 1983 and her habilitation in Social Studies of Science/Sociology of Science in 1997. Before coming to the university of Vienna she worked at CERN (Geneva, Switzerland) from 1983 to 1988. During her career, she has been guest professor/invited researcher at numerous universities, such as Université du Quebec à Montréal, Université Luis Pasteur, ETH Zurich, University of Antwerp and Harvard University. Her research focuses on shifting research cultures and institutional transformation as well as questions of governance and public participation in contemporary techno-scientific democracies. Her areas of study cover life science/(bio)medicine, nanotechnology, nuclear energy and sustainability research as well as the social sciences. She has published widely on these topics, but has also produced a number of policy reports on the European level. From 2002-2007 she was editor-in-chief of the SSCI ranked journal Science, Technology & Human Values and is member in numerous editorial boards of social science journals. She led the editorial team editing the Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (MIT Press 2017). Since 2017 she is president of European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST).

Plenary II: The role of public policies driving universities’ social responsibility and engagement

David Sweeney 
Executive Chair, Research England, United Kingdom

David Sweeney is Executive Chair of Research England which will oversee functions in relation to research and knowledge exchange, including providing grant funding to English universities, developing and implementing the Research Excellence Framework and Knowledge Exchange Framework in partnership with the other UK Higher Education (HE) funding bodies, overseeing sustainability of the Higher Education research base in England and managing the £900 million UK Research Partnership Investment Fund. Research England is a Council within UK Research Innovations alongside seven disciplinary councils and the UK innovation agency. After gaining First Class Honours in Statistics at the University of Aberdeen, David Sweeney worked at 2 Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) research institutes, as a consultant statistician then developing mathematical models of plant growth. His work on the computational aspects of this led into broader applications of IT in education and research, and he was Director of Information Services at Royal Holloway, University of London, before moving into university leadership as Vice-Principal (Communications, Enterprise and Research) in 2004. In this role he was responsible for research strategy and for developing Royal Holloway’s research-led commercial and consultancy activities. David Sweeney joined the Higher Education Funding Council for England in 2008 as Director (Research, Innovation and Skills) and led the development and implementation of the first Research Excellence Framework including the new impact agenda element. He was responsible for research policy and funding, knowledge exchange and university/business relations before being appointed by the Minister of State for Universities and Science to his current role in May 2017. He has been invited to visit many countries to advise on research assessment and funding, particularly with respect to research impact. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Aberdeen in 2012, was Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Newcastle, NSW in 2015 and is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.

Stanislav Kmeť 
Rector, Technical University of Košice, Slovakia 

Stanislav Kmet is currently Rector of the Technical University of Kosice (TUKE) and Professor at the Institute of Structural Engineering of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, TUKE, Slovakia. He was Vice-Rector of the TUKE, responsible for science and research. His professional background is in the theory and design of steel and adaptive structures with an application of artificial intelligence methods, research interests in the probabilistic reliability analysis, advanced computational techniques, simulation and modelling of structures. He has considerable experience in R&D projects funded by the EU Structural Funds - participating in seven projects, four times being a Project manager. He is a member of editorial boards of six domestic and international journals, an author and co-author of five books, 90 scientific and professional papers in journals, more than 240 articles in scientific and professional conference proceedings, 36 projects that have been carried out and 50 expertise reports for the industry.

Pastora Martínez Samper
Vice-President for Globalisation and Cooperation, Open University of Catalonia, Spain

Pastora Martínez Samper holds a PhD in Physical Sciences from the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM), a Master’s Degree in Business Management from EADA Business School and a Master's Degree in Leadership and Science Management (joint programme of University of Barcelona, Autonomous University of Barcelona and Pompeu Fabra University). Since 2008 she is also an evaluator of the National Agency for Evaluation and Prospective (ANEP) in the area of Technology Transfer. Since April 2010, she has been Manager and Head of international Relations at the Agustí Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBAPS).

Breakout sessions I

Session A: Social inclusiveness and diversity in higher education

Colin Scott

Colin Scott is Vice-President for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at University College Dublin where he also serves as Principal, UCD College of Social Sciences and Law, University College Dublin. He has previously held appointments at the Australian National University, the London School of Economics, the College of Europe, Bruges and the University of Warwick. He has held editorial responsibilities for the Modern Law Review, Law & Policy and Legal Studies and is currently a member of the Editorial Board of The Conversation UK His main field of academic expertise is regulatory governance and he is Convenor of the ECPR Standing Group on Regulatory Governance.

Session B: The societal impact of Open Science

Jean-Pierre Finance
EUA Chair of Expert Group on Science 2.0/Open Science

Following his Maths studies, Jean-Pierre Finance opted for informatics, and specialised in programming language semantics and formal methods in software engineering. He obtained his PhD in 1974 and his “Doctorat d’Etat” in 1979. From 1985 to 1994, he was the head of the Computer Science Research Centre of Nancy (CRIN).  He was the President of Henri Poincaré University (Nancy, France) from 1994 to 1999 and from 2004 to 2011. For two years (2007-2008) he was President of the CPU (Conference of University Presidents). In 2010 he was President of the cluster of the four universities in the Lorraine Region and actively participated in the project aiming to merge these four universities into the single University of Lorraine created in January 2012. He was EUA Board member from 2009 to 2013 and Council member from 2006 to 2016. From 2011 to 2015 he was the chair of the nomination committee of the association. Currently he is the Chair of EUA's Open Access Expert Group and of the Big Deal High Level Group. He is also member of the Council of the Magna Charta Observatory, as well as President of various French organisations devoted to digital publications (COUPERIN & ABES) and to digital high speed network (RENATER), and member of the new French Office for Scientific Integrity.

Session C: Universities upholding academic values

Liviu Matei
Provost and Pro-Rector, Central European University, Hungary

Liviu Matei is Provost of Central European University, Professor of Higher Education Policy and Director of CEU’s Yehuda Elkana Center for Higher Education. He taught at universities in Romania, Hungary and the United States. He consulted extensively in the area of higher education policy and conducted applied policy research projects for the World Bank, UNESCO, OSCE, the Council of Europe, the European Commission, and other international intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations, national authorities and universities in Europe and Asia. Liviu Matei is a member of the Board of Trustees of the American University of Central Asia and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of the European Higher Education Area.

Friday 6 April 2018

Breakout sessions II

Session D: Higher education beyond the traditional cycles: lifelong learning and employability

Hanne Smidt
EUA senior adviser

Hanne Smidt is a senior adviser at the European University Association (EUA) and runs her own consultancy in Sweden (Hanne Smidt Consulting). Over the years she has worked in higher education at institutional, national and European level and has in particular followed the implementation of the Bologna Process and the EHEA. She has actively participated in the promotion of widening participation and lifelong learning (LLL) and has researched and written extensively on the implementation of the Bologna Process and the European Higher Education Area. Recently she has started to use her longstanding knowledge and engagement in European higher education to support one element of LLL, the further development of validation (RPL) and integration of students and academics with foreign credentials with a special view to the current refugee situation. She is currently involved in the development of the institutional practice on validation and recognition of prior learning in Swedish higher education institutions, and is the project manager for a Swedish national initiative on how to engage institutional leadership and academics in recognition of prior learning.

Peter Haring Bolívar
Chair of the EUA Expert Group on RIS3

Peter Haring Bolívar is vice-rector for research and young scientists at the University of Siegen in Germany. He is also chair for high frequency and quantum electronics at the university since 2004, as well as the European University Association’s delegate to the ‘structured dialogue group’ with the European Commission. During his career, Peter Haring Bolívar has developed nine patents and contributed to 91 publications.

Jaume Carot
Vice-Rector for Research and Internationalisation, University of Balearic Islands, Spain

Jaume Carot obtained a degree in Physics from the University of Barcelona in 1982 and a PhD in Physics from the Balearic Islands in 1987. From 1987 to 1989 he was an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen (United Kingdom), where he carried out a two-year postdoctoral stay at the Department of Mathematics, funded through a Fleming Scholarship (British Council). He has conducted several research stays in the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and Portugal. He was lecturer at the University of Madeira (Portugal) during a semester in 1993 and has supervised two doctoral theses and several master's theses. Currently he is Full Professor in the area of theoretical physics at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB). His research is in the field of general relativity theory, in which he has authored more than  fifty papers in peer-reviewed, international indexed journals and a similar number of book chapters and other scientific publications. He has also co-authored a book on Theoretical Mechanics, and participated in more than twenty competitive research projects. He has acted as referee for a number of international publications, as well as research evaluator for research management agencies. In 2013 Jaume Carot was appointed Vice-Rector for Research and Graduate Studies at the UIB, and since 2017 he is Vice-Rector for Research and Internationalisation. In 2015 he became a member of the Executive Committee of the CRUE’s (Spanish Rector’s Conference) R&D&I commission. In March 2017 he was appointed member of the RIS3 Expert Group of the European University Association. In 2011-2012 he co-authored the proposal of the Euromediterranean Tourism and Water Campus, Campus of International Excellence and contributed to the RIS3 proposal for the Balearic Islands region.  Currently, he is the University representative in the monitoring committee of the RIS3 strategy for the Balearic Islands region.

Session F: Scientific integrity and ethics in European universities

Ulrike Felt
Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Vienna, Austria

For biography, please see above

Hilligje van’t Land
Secretary General, International Association of Universities 

Educated in France, the Netherlands and Canada, Hilligje van’t Land obtained her PhD in comparative francophone literature from Groningen University and completed a post doc at Laval University in Québec.  She taught at Universities in the Netherlands, Canada and France. Since 2002 she has been working for IAU and has been in charge of membership development and retention, overall management of the IAU thematic priority linked to Intercultural Learning and Dialogue, Innovative Approaches to Doctoral Education in Africa, Higher Education and Research for Sustainable Development, as well as the coordination of the preparation of annual work plans for activities related to thematic priorities, including IAU international events.  She was appointed Secretary General in September 2017. Hilligje van’t Land published on a number of issues relating to Higher Education and is Editor of the magazine IAU Horizons. She is a member of various working groups and expert Committees including at UNESCO and the Council of Europe, and jointly leads the work on whole institution approach to HESD for one of the Partner Networks of the UNESCO Global Action Programme for ESD.


Torbjørn Digernes
Chair of the EUA Energy and Environment Platform and former Rector, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway

Torbjørn Digernes is Professor in Marine Technology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Previously, he was the Rector of NTNU (2005-2013) and Dean for Engineering Faculties (1999-2005).  He is currently engaged in the planning of large laboratories and research infrastructures at his university. He is heading a task force for Open Access and Open Data in the CESAER network (Conference of European Schools of Advanced Engineering Education and Research). He is also heading the European Platform of Universities in Energy Research & Education (EPUE) under the auspices of the European University Association (EUA), and in this capacity he is an observer on behalf of EUA in the Executive Committee of the European Energy Research Alliance. He has held a number of positions in research and education organisations nationally and internationally, among others Chairman of the Research Policy Committee of the Norwegian Association of Higher Education Institutions, member of the Research Policy Working Group of EUA, Chairman of NORDTEK, a network of Nordic advanced engineering education institutions. Torbjørn Digernes is a member of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters, and the president elect of the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences (NTVA). He has been conferred Knight of the First Class of the Royal Norwegian Order of St Olav.


Christoph Franz
Chairman of the Board of Directors, Roche Holding AG, Switzerland

After graduating from Darmstadt Technical University and the Ecole Centrale de Lyon in Industrial Engineering, Christoph Franz earned his PhD in Political Science from Darmstadt Technical University and worked as a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley. He started his career at Lufthansa AG in 1990 and joined Deutsche Bahn AG in 1994, where he was appointed a Member of the Executive Board and CEO of the Passenger Transport Division. He was then appointed Chief Executive Officer of Swiss International Air Lines AG in 2004 and was later promoted to CEO of Lufthansa Airlines in 2009. From 2011 to 2014, Christoph Franz was the CEO of Deutsche Lufthansa AG. Christoph Franz has been serving as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Roche Holding AG since March 2014. Further mandates include the boards of Stadler Rail AG and Zurich Insurance Company Ltd. He is a Member of the Board of Trustees of Ernst Göhner Foundation, the Advisory Board of University of St. Gallen (HSG) and Member of the Assembly of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Moreover, he was appointed Honorary Professor for Business Administration at University of St. Gallen (HSG) in May 2017.

Address by the Government Councillor of Canton Zurich and President of Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education

Kevin Schawinski
Assistant Professor, Leader of the black hole and galaxy astrophysics group, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Kevin Schawinski leads the black hole and galaxy astrophysics group at ETH Zurich, where he works on the formation and evolution of galaxies and their supermassive black holes. Prior to joining ETH Zurich, he was a NASA Einstein Fellow at Yale University and the Henry Skynner Junior Research Fellow at Balliol College Oxford. He holds a D.Phil in Astrophysics from Oxford University, and in between working on machine learning applications in astrophysics, he spends time at telescopes in Chile and Hawaii. He is also the co-founder of the Galaxy Zoo citizen science project.

Sabine Stoll
Professor, Director of the Psycholinguistics Laboratory, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Sabine Stoll is Professor at the Department of Comparative Linguistics at the University of Zurich and Director of the Psycholinguistics Laboratory.  She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. She specialises in first language acquisition from a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective. Her research revolves around the question of which structural and cognitive factors influence the acquisition processes in first language learners. For this she has built up a large-scale database of naturalistic language acquisition data for which new statistical approaches are pioneered. Currently she investigates these issues with her interdisciplinary team in an ERC grant studying the acquisition process in ten maximally diverse languages.  

Julia Altenbuchner
Post-Doctoral Researcher, Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) Research Group, University College London, United Kingdom

Julia Altenbuchner studied Geography and Computer Science (BSc) at Ludwig Maximilians University Munich. She obtained an MSc in Geographic Information Science (GIS) from University College London’s department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering. Right after, she joined the Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) Research Group as a PhD student and is now a post-doctoral researcher at the same group. The objective of her research is to empower people to protect their local environment regardless of their background and literacy skills. Julia Altenbuchner develops innovative tools that enable communities to monitor environmental changes and resource extraction in an accessible way. Her research interests include geospatial technologies, Human-Computer Interaction and environmental sustainability. She is interested in participatory GIS and Citizen Science projects in vulnerable places of the earth in order to improve their resource management.