"Assessment, an essential step towards the European Higher Education and Research Area" PFUE 2022

Thierry Coulhon has been the President of the High Council for the Evaluation of Research and Higher Education (Hcéres) since October 2020. He is a French mathematician and in 2008, he was an advisor and then deputy director of the cabinet of the former minister Valérie Pécresse, then between 2010 and 2012, he directed the program "Centres of Excellence" of the General Commission for Investment. In parallel, his academic career led him to preside over the University of Cergy-Pontoise and Université PSL in France, as well as to direct the Mathematical Sciences Institute of the Australian National University. Prior to his position at the Hcéres, and since 2017, he was the education, higher education, research and innovation advisor to the President of the French Republic.

Clément Beaune was appointed Secretary of State for European Affairs to the Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs in 2020. Following his studies at Sciences Po Paris, the College of Europe in Bruges and ENA (Ecole Nationale d'Administration), he began his career in 2009 at the Budget Directorate, as deputy head of the finance laws office. From 2012 to 2014, he joined the cabinet of former French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, as a budget advisor. In 2014, he joined the cabinet of Emmanuel Macron, Minister of the Economy, as European Affairs advisor and became his European Affairs advisor at the Presidency of the French Republic in 2017. 

Michaela Sojdrova has been a Czech Member of the European Parliament and Vice-Chair of the Committee on Culture and Education since 2014. From 1996 to 2010, she was repeatedly elected to the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament, where she worked as a member and vice-chair of the Committee on Education, Culture, Youth and Sport. ) In 2009, she received the French Order of Merit for her contribution to the development of Czech-French relations. Since 2010, she worked at the HQ of the Czech School Inspection as coordinator of ESF (EU) project activities and as a representative of the Ministry of Education in the OECD Governing Board of the Centre for Research and Innovation in Education.

Claire Giry is the Director-General of Research and Innovation at the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation since June 2021. A doctor in molecular and cellular biology, she was responsible for developing national, European and international partnerships at the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm). She was also a technical advisor for higher education and research to the Prime Minister (2007-2009), head of the joint department of the General Directorate for Higher Education and Professional Integration, and the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation. She has directed the "Centres of Excellence" program of the General Commission for Investment.

Manuel Tunon de Lara has been the president of France Universités (formerly the Conference of University Presidents) since 2018 and was previously a member of the Health Commission there - he served as vice president twice. From 2014 to January 2022, he was also president of the University of Bordeaux, and from 2008 to 2014, president of the University Bordeaux Segalen. He is a Professor of Pulmonology and studied medicine in Bordeaux. He completed his studies with a doctorate in life sciences at the University of Paris-Descartes and the Pasteur Institute before completing his post-doctorate at the University of Southampton, in Great Britain.

Anna Panagopoulou is the Director for the European Research and Innovation Area in the Directorate General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission. She is responsible for co-creating, with Member States and stakeholders, policies to shape a globally competitive European research and innovation system that is open, efficient, coherent, and conducive to transformative innovation for a sustainable future.  She has been with the Commission for 24 years, holding various policy and management positions. She holds a Master's degree in electrical engineering and has extensive professional experience in the private and public sectors.

Professor Maria Leptin has been President of the European Research Council since November 2021. Prior to that, she was Director of EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organization) from 2010 to 2021. As a graduate in mathematics and biology from the Universities of Bonn and Heidelberg, she has done research in major laboratories such as the Institute of Immunology in Basel, the Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, Pat O'Farrell's laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen. Maria Leptin has also been a professor at the Institute of Genetics at the University of Cologne and the École Normale Supérieure - PSL in Paris.

Professor Chan Basaruddin is currently the Vice President of the International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE) and a member of the Accreditation Council of BANPT (National Accreditation Body for Higher Education) in Indonesia. He served as Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science at the University of Indonesia from 2004 to 2013, Director of the Executive Board of BANPT Accreditation Agency from 2016 to 2021 and Chairman of ASEAN Quality Assurance Networks (AQAN) from 2017 to 2020. . He has a PhD in numerical analysis and computer science from the University of Manchester, UK.

Douglas Blackstock is the President of ENQA (European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education). He joined the ENQA board in October 2019 and was elected president in April 2021. He also spent 20 years in senior positions at the UK's Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA), where he was chief executive from 2015 to 2021. Prior to that, he held leadership positions in students' unions at several universities. In addition to his international consulting work, he is a board member of Cilex Legal Regulation, Qualifications Wales, the University of Law, and South Gloucestershire and Stroud College.

Maria Kelo is the director of the Institutional Development Unit at the EUA since January 2022. Before that, Maria was for over a decade the Director of ENQA as well as a member of the EQAR Executive Board in 2013-2020. She took part in European policy-making processes within the Bologna Process and through cooperation with the European Commission. Prior to joining ENQA, Maria worked for nine years in the field of international higher education in different European organisations and as a private consultant and has gained significant experiences on issues such as quality assurance, international higher education, and higher education reform. Maria is a graduate of University College London and the London School of Economics. 

John Edwards is Secretary-General of EURASHE, the European association representing applied/professional higher education institutions. He worked for the European Commission's Joint Research Centre between 2011 and 2020 and his main area of expertise is the role of higher education in smart specialisation, innovation and regional development. He is currently coordinating an Erasmus+ project on regional impact mapping of universities of applied sciences. He is a graduate of the University of St Andrews, the College of Europe in Bruges and the University of Newcastle, where he obtained his PhD in economic geography.

Jakub Grodecki currently holds the position of Vice President of the European Students' Union (ESU). He is mainly interested in the quality of higher education and its digitalisation. He is also a member of the Advisory Council on Youth of the Council of Europe. He has worked as a quality assurance expert for the Polish Accreditation Committee (PKA) and ESU. He was also an international officer of the Student Parliament of the Republic of Poland (PSRP) and an elected representative of the Student Union of the University of Science and Technology (AGH) in Krakow. He has an academic background in mechanical engineering and management and production engineering. 

Colin Tück is the Director of the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR). He has been working for EQAR since October 2007, initially as project manager on behalf of its founding members (ENQA, ESU, EUA and EURASHE). Colin oversees EQAR's management of the Database of External Quality Assessment Results (DEQAR) and EQAR's contribution to the development of the European Higher Education Area. Prior to joining EQAR, he was involved in quality assurance issues as a member of the Bologna Process Committee of the European Students' Union (ESU) and of the Executive Board of the National Union of Students in Germany (Freier Zusammenschluss von StudentInnenschaften).

Fabienne Péraldi-Leneuf is vice-president "Europe" of the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, she pilots the European university project "Una Europa". She is also a member of the Research Commission and the office of the Presidency of Paris 1. Since 2016, she has been the director of the Franco-Italian double degree program and co-director of the Master 2 International Lawyer. Before that, she taught public law at the University of Paris-Saclay, the University of Lille, and was a lecturer at the University of Paris Dauphine. Fabienne Péraldi-Leneuf holds a doctorate in public law from the universities of Dijon and Strasbourg.

Sofia Costa d'Aguiar is the Director of the European University EELISA (European Engineering Learning Innovation Science Alliance). She previously worked for more than 10 years at the SNCF (French National Railway Company), where she was in charge of Innovation & Digital Transformation. Nominated "Woman of Industry, Research and Development" by the business and technology magazine L'Usine nouvelle in 2020, she is also quadrilingual (English, Spanish, French and Portuguese) and her multicultural experience feeds her professional commitments. She holds a PhD in Geotechnics and Environmental Engineering.

Pierre Koch has been the President of the University of Technology of Troyes (UTT) in France since 2014 and coordinator of the European University of Technology (EUt+). Prior to that, Secretary-GeneralGeneral of ESCP Europe Business School (2012 - 2014) and advisor to the cabinet of the Minister in charge of apprenticeship and professional training in 2011. He worked for more than 10 years at the National Agency for the Professional Training of Adults, and 6 years at the ENSAM engineering school. Pierre Koch is a graduate of ENSAM, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), the European Institute of Business Administration (INSEAD), and the University of Aix-Marseille, where he holds a doctorate in management science.  

Jolanta Silka is the Head of the Latvian Higher Education Quality Agency (AIKA), which is part of the Academic Information Centre (AIC). She has more than 10 years of professional experience in the field of higher education policy development and implementation, including the Bologna Process and quality assurance reforms. Jolanta has held senior positions in the Ministry of Education and Science and in higher education institutions. She has contributed to the development of the quality assurance system in Latvia, including the development of AIKA.

Sandra Bezjak is the Acting Director of ASHE (Agency for Science and Higher Education) in Croatia. Prior to that, she held the positions of Deputy Director and Head of the Department for Higher Education. She holds a Master of Science degree in Biotechnology from the University of Zagreb. She has participated in numerous seminars and conferences organized by ENQA (European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education), ECA (European Consortium for Accreditation), CEENQA (Central and Eastern European Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education), on a wide range of topics such as quality assurance in higher education and the Bologna Process.

Vanessa Debiais-Sainton is Head of the Unit in charge of higher education policies and programmes in the Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture of the European Commission. This unit is the lead service for European policies on the modernization of higher education, the new European universities initiative, the automatic mutual recognition of diplomas and periods of study abroad, the creation of the European student card and the higher education component of the Erasmus+ program. In previous positions at the European Commission, Vanessa worked in the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation.

Antonio Felice Uricchio is the President of the National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes (ANVUR) in Italy. Prior to that, he had a long career at the University of Bari Aldo Moro (Italy) where he was a rector, a professor of tax law, coordinator of doctoral programs in public administration, economics and finance, dean of the Second Faculty of Law, and vice-president of the Department of the Study of Mediterranean Societies. He has also taught at the universities of Uade Buenos Aires (Argentina), Valladolid (Spain), Lodz (Poland) and Innsbruck (Austria). He has lectured at the School of Economics and Finance in Rome and at the Tax Law School of the Guardia di Finanza in Italy.

Theodor Leiber is a German physicist, higher education researcher and has been a scientific advisor at evalag (Evaluation Agency Baden-Württemberg) since 2007. Since 2021, he has been a member of the Commission for Research Information in Germany (KFiD) and of the European Research Infrastructure Evaluation Consortium (ERIEC) executive committee. He also works on projects in the field of higher education organised by the European Commission, such as the projects "Enhancing the development of educators' digital competencies" (EDUDIG) and "Learning and teaching space in higher education" (LTSHE). In recent years, he has been a member of working groups at DeGEval (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Evaluation - German Evaluation Society) and ENQA.

Dr Anders Söderholm is Director-General of the Swedish Higher Education Authority (UKÄ) and former Vice-Chancellor of Mid Sweden University. He received his PhD from Umeå University in 1991 and became Professor of Business Administration in 2005. His main research interests are in temporary projects and organizations. Anders Söderholm has also been a visiting scholar at Stanford University and the Royal Institute of Technology. He was the rector of the Umeå Business School between 2000 and 2003.

Professor Petr Noskievič has been a member of the Board of Directors of the National Accreditation Bureau for Higher Education of the Czech Republic (NAB) since 2018. He is at the same time Professor of Machine and Process Control. He is President of the Czech Association for Hydraulics and Pneumatics, a national representative at the annual international conference "Research and Education in Mechatronics", and a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Fluid Power. For 14 years, he served as Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs at the Technical University of Ostrava, and then as Acting Rector between 2016 and 2017. He also served on the board of the Czech Council of Higher Education Institutions.

Kostas Glinos heads the unit in charge of Open Science in the Directorate General for Research and Innovation at the European Commission since 2019. From 2014 to 2019, he headed the unit responsible for the EU's international cooperation policy in Science Technology and Innovation (STI) and relations with Europe, Asia and Oceania. Prior to joining the Commission, Kostas worked in the chemical industry in the United States and Belgium, lectured at universities, and conducted research in Greece. He holds a PhD in engineering from the University of Massachusetts and an Advanced Professional Certificate in investment management from Drexel University in the US.

Lidia Borrell-Damián is the Secretary-General of Science Europe. Between 2006 and 2014, she was Director of Research and Innovation for the European University Association (EUA) and responsible for the overall strategy and activities of the EUA in this field. Lidia has also contributed to the European Union's Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. She has also worked on doctoral education through the EUA-Council for Doctoral Education (EUA-CDE) and coordinated the science policy contribution to the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan) through the European Universities Energy Platform (EUA-EUP).

Stephen Curry is a Professor of Structural Biology at Imperial College London, where he is also Assistant Provost for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.  For many years he has written and campaigned on a range of scientific issues, including research assessment, open access, research funding and science policy. He is currently chair of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).Stephen Curry is a Professor of Structural Biology at Imperial College London, where he is also Assistant Provost for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.  For many years he has written and campaigned on a range of scientific issues, including research assessment, open access, research funding and science policy. He is currently chair of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).

Déborah Chery is co-leader of the Eurodoc Scientific Integrity and Evaluation Working Group. From 2020 to 2021, she was Vice-President and Eurodoc European delegate of the Confederation of Young Researchers. She obtained her PhD in analytical chemistry at Sorbonne University (formerly Université Pierre et Marie Curie) and at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris-PSL. She taught and studied the electrochemical behaviour of gels at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Chimie de Lyon, and did a post-doctoral visit at the Center for Electrochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin. She also lectured and did research on sargassum algae at the University of the West Indies.

A mathematician by training, Jean-Pierre Bourguignon has been a Research Fellow at CNRS (1969-2013) while teaching at École Polytechnique (1986-2012). He has been the Director of the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (1994-2013), nowadays Honorary Professor there. He has been the European Research Council (ERC) President (2014-2019) and ad interim (July 2020-August 2021).

Dominique Rousset is a journalist, writer and radio producer for France Culture and Radio-France. Since 2021, she has produced and presented the program "Nos Géographies" on France Culture. Before that, she also produced and presented the programs "Matières à penser", "l'Economie en questions", "Rendez-vous des Politiques" and, as co-producer, "Les Enjeux Internationaux".  Dominique Rousset also hosts conferences and conventions on a wide range of topics (labour, climate, research, Europe...). She holds a Master's degree from the University of Chapel Hill in North Carolina (US), a Master's degree in Literature from the University of Aix en Provence and a diploma in Political Science from the IEP of the same city.