On 19 December, three new members of the European Research Council’s (ERC) governing body, the Scientific Council, have been appointed by the European Commission
The three newly appointed members are:
- Ben L. Feringa, Nobel Prize winner from the University of Groningen;
- Lene Vestergaard Hau, Professor at Harvard University; and
- Manuel Arellano, Professor at the Centre for Monetary and Financial Studies, Madrid.
All new members have been selected by an independent Identification Committee, composed of seven distinguished scientists appointed by the European Commission. The scientific community was consulted in this process.
The mandates of three current members – Professors Tomas Jungwirth, Dame Janet Thornton and Fabio Zwirner – have been renewed for two more years. The Scientific Council at the same time announced Dame Janet Thornton and Fabio Zwirner as new ERC Vice Presidents.
Background
The ERC Scientific Council, composed of 22 distinguished scientists and scholars representing the European scientific community, is the independent governing body of the ERC. Its main role is setting the ERC strategy and selecting the peer review evaluators.
The ERC's mission is to encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and to support investigator-driven frontier research across all fields, on the basis of scientific excellence.
