It was announced today in Brussels that the Chairman of the Board of Directors at the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH), Professor of the Medical School of the University of Crete and member of the Advisory Committee of H.F.R.I., Nektarios Tavernarakis, was unanimously elected Vice President of the European Research Council (ERC). From January 2021, that is when he takes up his new duties, he will lead the actions of the ERC in the field of Life Sciences.

Professor Nektarios Tavernarakis has been an ERC Scientific Council member since 2016 and is the first and only Greek to be elected Vice President of the ERC, to go through a brilliant scientific and personal course. Nektarios Tavernarakis is the Chairman of the Board of Directors at the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH), Research Director at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB), and Professor of Molecular Systems Biology at the Medical School of the University of Crete, in Heraklion, Greece. He is the Director of the Graduate Program on BioInformatics at the Medical School of the University of Crete, and is also heading the Neurogenetics and Ageing laboratory of IMBB. He is also Member of the Advisory Committee of H.F.R.I., which is of an advisory nature and aims to evaluate the Foundation’s action and to formulate opinions and recommendations to optimize its operation.

Professor Tavernarakis remarked: “I am deeply honoured to have been elected ERC Vice-President for the Life Sciences domain. Having witnessed first-hand, as a grantee, the transformative impact of ERC on European science, I am wholeheartedly committed to contributing to its mission in this new role. The ERC is not merely a success story in the framework of the European ideal; it stands as a radiant paradigm of how investment in frontier research can reap enormous benefits for society at large. I am looking forward to working closely with my Scientific Council colleagues, across all three domains, to serve science by building on the ERC’s legacy of fostering excellent research. Today, the ERC’s support for bottom up, blue skies research is more relevant than ever. This strategy can effectively protect us in the face of unpredictable threats, and address diverse and complex global challenges.”

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.

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.

To read the short CV of Professor Nektarios Tavernarakis please click here

Source