3rd PROGRESS REVIEW CONFERENCE
of the Universities participating in the
"Excellence Initiative – Research University" programme
chair of the review panel during the first call under the "Excellence Initiative Research University" programme. Co-author of the report on Poland’s science and higher education system: "2017 Peer Review Report on Poland’s Higher Education and Science System" written by the European Commission experts under the Horizon 2020 Policy Support Facility. Rector of Aarhus University in the years 2005 – 2013, he has been active in many roles at institutions supporting higher education and science, e.g. as president of EuroScience 2012-18, as vice-president of the European University Association 2012–15, and as the World Bank’s chief expert for higher education 1993–2005. He was member of several OECD expert and other international review and advisory panels, and since 2021 he has participated in the EU/PSF review of Romania’s Research sector. When he was Rector for the Danish Research Academy 1986-93, and in charge of reforming research training in Denmark and for introducing Ph.D. programs in Denmark ́s research universities. Further, he was member of the Danish Prime Minister's Growth Forum; and the Danish National Research Foundation. Lauritz Holm-Nielsen was chairman a.o. of the Nordic Academy for Advanced Study, of Denmark’s Science Research Council; Council for Development Research; the national commission for research infrastructure; and National Fund for Nature. He w as executive director at the Sino-Danish Centre in Beijing between 2013 and 2018.
professor in higher education studies at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Oslo (UiO), Norway. In addition, he is extraordinary professor at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, and research fellow at the Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy, New York University, USA. His main research interests are in the area of the governance of higher education and science, and the relationships between higher education and society. Before moving to Norway in 2000, he was acting director of the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS), University of Twente, the Netherlands. He has participated in many national and international expert committees and panels in higher education, including an international panel assessing the higher education reform in Denmark, a Norwegian government committee for higher education, and OECD panels reviewing higher education in Japan and Finland. He has been a member of the Executive Board of University College Oslo (now Oslo Metropolitan University), and is currently, amongst other things, member of the executive board of the Barratt Due Music Academy in Oslo. He is the editor of the academic book series Higher Education Dynamics (Springer), and has produced over 250 international articles, books, and reports.
she presides over a symbiosis and functional genomics unit at the Biological Research Centre in Hungary. Since 2020 she has been a member of the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors of the European Commission and since 2022 she has been the chair of the Life Sciences Class of Academia Europaea. Before she was a member of the ERC Scientific Council (2013–2018), and in 2017–2018 its Vice-President (Life Sciences). She has been a founding member and science director of the CNRS Institute of Plant Sciences (Institut des Sciences Végétales), and the founding director of the BAYGEN Institute (Hungary). She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Academia Europaea, Leopoldina, French Agricultural Academy and European Academy of Microbiology. She is a board member of Academia Europaea and a former member of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Scientific Advisory Board. She received the Balzan prize in 2018.
chair of the UK Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) Board, and chair of the Governing Body, University of Plymouth. In the years 2006–2009 he served as vice-president for research at the University of Manchester, and in the years 2009–2017 as the principal of Queen Mary University of London. Former treasurer of UK Universities, an advocacy organisation for universities in the United Kingdom, and head of the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) Board in the years 2013–2017.
works as a senior lecturer at University of Bucharest (Physics) and as a policy expert for the Romanian Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development &Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI). Her main areas of expertise include: research and innovation (R&I), higher education policy design and evaluation, materials science, nanotechnology, smart specialisation, innovative start-up/scale-up. She worked at EC-JRC Seville for seven years, where she was responsible for the monitoring and evaluation of research and innovation (R&I) policy mixes in EU and provided support to policy-making process aimed to enhance the European Research Area and the synergies of the cohesion policy with R&I. Currently her work as policy expert is focused on contributions to the design and evaluation of the R&I &Smart Specialization and Higher Education policies. She has been working as an independent expert for EC, REA, EIT, for studies in Tertiary Education, Science and Innovation.