Professors Andrzej Jajszczyk and Nektarios Tavernarakis have been elected as the new Vice Presidents of the European Research Council (ERC). They will take up duties on January 1st, 2021, alongside current Vice President Eveline Crone. Elected by the ERC Scientific Council, they will be in charge of ERC activities in the domains of Physical and Engineering Sciences and Life Sciences, respectively.
Professor Andrzej Jajszczyk has been a member of the ERC Scientific Council since 2017. He is President of the Krakow Branch of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Professor at the Department of Telecommunications, the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow, Poland.
Professor Nektarios Tavernarakis has been an ERC Scientific Council member since 2016. He is Chairman of the Board of Directors at the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH) and Professor of Molecular Systems Biology at the Medical School of the University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece.
The ERC is chaired by the ERC President - currently Professor Jean-Pierre Bourguignon - and has three Vice Presidents, who are equally the Vice-Chairs of the ERC Scientific Council. They represent the three ERC domains. The current Vice-President Professor Eveline Crone (Social Sciences and Humanities) will continue her mandate. Nektarios Tavernarakis and Andrzej Jajszczyk will replace Professor Dame Janet Thornton (Life Sciences) and Professor Fabio Zwirner (Physical Sciences and Engineering), whose mandates end in December 2020.
The ERC Scientific Council is composed of 22 distinguished scientists and scholars representing the European scientific community. Their main role is setting the ERC strategy and selecting the peer review evaluators.