10th CZECH DAYS FOR EUROPEAN RESEARCH „HOW TO BE PREPARED FOR HORIZON 2020?“ (25th October 2012, Prague) Biographies of Speakers (in alphabetical order) Rebecca Allinson is a Senior Consultant at Technopolis, a European innovation and policy consultancy. She focuses on European and UK Public Policy consultancy work in the field of Higher Education, Research and Enterprise policy. Rebecca has recently worked with the EIT to produce the publication “Catalysing Innovation in the Knowledge Triangle” on practices from the EIT Knowledge and Innovation Communities. The publication also looks at the EIT in the wider innovation and research landscape in Europe and explores certain aspects of the future of the EIT under Horizon 2020. Aleš Fiala is Head of Unit of Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) at DG CONNECT. Before joining the European Commission in 2007, he worked as a project manager and researcher at the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) and Unilever Research in the Netherlands, at the University of California, Berkeley in the United States, and in the Centre de Physique des Plasmas et Applications (CPAT) in Toulouse, France. After graduation from the Czech Technical University in Prague, he got a PhD in plasma physics from Universite Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France, and MBA from the Erasmus University, Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands. Professor Rudolf Haňka has been the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic since August 2012. He was appointed the member of the Research and Development Council in 2010 and Chairman of the Council for the Reform of Tertiary Education in the Czech Republic in 2009. Rudolf Haňka graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague and for over 40 years has been at the University of Cambridge where he specialised in applications of artificial intelligence to medical diagnosis and knowledge management. He founded the Centre for Clinical Informatics at the School of Clinical Medicine at the University of Cambridge and was its Director. Apart from his academic work he has been a member of various central bodies of the University including membership of the Financial Board from 1984 to 2002. Tomáš Hruda is a graduate of the Charles University in Prague where he obtained two master degrees – in the field of Economics and International relations. Since then he has acquired extensive work experience in management in both public and private sector. He had been working in CzechInvest, the Investment and Business Development Agency, which focuses on support of existing and new entrepreneurs and foreign investors in the Czech Republic. He held the post of the Chief Executive Officer of the agency and was responsible, among others, for running several national programs aimed at enhancing competitiveness and innovativeness of the economy of the Czech Republic. Since 2009 he successfully led the preparation phase and subsequent realization of the CEITEC (Central European Institute of Technology) project as the executive director. Recently he was appointed as Vice Minister responsible for higher education and research at the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic. Ylva Huber, PhD, geneticist by training, joined the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), Division of European and International Programmes (EIP), in August 2004. She was National Contact Point (NCP) for “Health” in FP7 (2006-2008), acting NCP for the “Knowledge Based Bio-Economy “(KBBE; 2010) and is Information Officer for the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) since 2006. From 2009-2010 she headed the Unit for Life Sciences and Biotechnology at EIP. Since 2011 she is NCP for the European Research Council (ERC). Rein Kaarli has a scientific background in physics. Since 2002 he is advisor at the department of research policy of the Ministry of Education and Research, Estonia. There he has been involved in various tasks such as the development of research policies and RnD financing system, preparation of National Action plans and Progress Reports, preparation of the strategy document and implementation of EU structural funds 2007-2013, preparation of reviews and statistical materials on R&D in Estonia. He has also been acting as FP6 and FP7 National Coordinator and is participating in FP programme committees. From 1996 till 2002 he was advisor at the Estonian Secretariat of R&D Council. From 1974 till1996 he was head of a research group at the Institute of Physics of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. In 1993 he was awarded the annual prize of the Estonian Physical Society. Sofia Karakostas is a head of EU GrantsAccess at ETH Zurich - University of Zurich. Her expertise focuses on fostering close co-operation between excellent scientists and scholars from abroad and from Switzerland. In the field of international academic cooperation she has set up and strives to further professionalise both for ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich a unique system of research quality management for proposals and projects. She studied History and Economics at the University of Zurich where she graduated with the Master of Art in 1996. For several years she was a member of the Commission for Intercultural Dialogue of the Mayor of Zurich as well as of the Advisory Group for legal immigration and integration services in the Canton of Zurich, before she joined the administration of ETH Zurich, first at the Rectors Office and then as Head of the Student Mobility Office. Zygmunt Krasinski (PhD) is a Deputy Director of the National Contact Point for Research Programmes of the EU (NCP-PL) at the Institute of Fundamental Technological Research Polish Academy of Sciences (IPPT PAN), supervising the finance, innovation, research project management and international cooperation. He was graduated in electronics and information technology from the Warsaw University of Technology. Dr. Krasinski is a national expert of the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education to the Strategic Forum for International S&T Cooperation and FP7 INCO Programme Committee. He has experience as an expert in several EC working groups, advisor for EU RTD programmes and trainer in the field of research and innovation management (Europe, Central Asia). José Manuel Leceta is a director of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. He is a respected specialist in innovation economics and had held the position of International Director at the Spanish Innovation Agency (CDTI) since 2004. As Director, his responsibilities included the promotion and management of the Spanish participation in the EU R&D Framework Programmes and other international closeto-market technology cooperation initiatives in Europe (EUREKA) and Latin America (IBEROEKA). Before that José Manuel Leceta worked as a Head of Department for Technologies and Space Programmes at CDTI. Rita Lecbychova joined the European Commission Directorate General for Research and Innovation on 1st February 2011 as a Head of Unit B.4 – Joint Programming. The Unit B.4 is a part of Directorate B – European Research Area of Directorate General for Research and Innovation. Dr. Alexis-Michel Mugabushaka is a Policy Analyst at the European research Council Executive Agency (ERCEA) where he coordinates, among others, the evaluation and monitoring activities. Before joining the ERCEA, he was a Science Officer for corporate science policy at the European Science Foundation (ESF) in Strasbourg. In this capacity he oversaw science policy initiatives of the organisation and coordinated various fora in which national agencies exchanged information and experiences on funding practices and jointly developed funding policies. He previously held the positions of Officer for Statistics and Evaluation at the German Research Council (DFG) and Research Associate at the University of Kassel, Germany. He has a doctorate in applied social sciences in the area of higher education and science policy studies. Stanislav Sipko has been acting as a chairman and founder of the Slovak Organization for Research and Development Activities (SOVVA) since 2007. SOVVA is a non-government organization of nationwide competence to promote R&D development in Slovakia and since 2012 it is national contact points host organization as well. Stanislav Sipko acted as Director-General of the Department of Science and Technology at the Ministry of Education of the Slovak Republic. He was responsible for planning and implementation of science and technology policies, international cooperation and preparing of the Operation Programme Research and Development. Through his professional career he acted as an advisor to the deputy prime minister and state secretaries in the fields of research and development. Kathrin Stratmann is the German NCP coordinator and deputy head of the EU-Bureau of the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF). She has worked as an NCP for Marie Curie and Science and Society and has been the NCP coordinator since 2005. From 1999 - 2006 she was responsible for the German Contact Point for the Integration of the Central- and Eastern European Candidate Countries into the FRP. Ms Stratmann holds a Masters degree in American literature from the University of Bonn. Naděžda Witzanyová has a scientific background in polymer chemistry. She trained as an engineer at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague and then worked as researcher at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic at the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry. She joined the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic in 2006, where she was responsible for various agendas concerning international and European cooperation in RnD. She is an ESFRI and ERAC delegate. Now, she is Head of Unit RnD policies and acting Director of Research and Development Department.