Prof. Jean-Pierre Bourguignon is a French mathematician and the current President of the European Research Council (ERC). Previously, he worked at CNRS during his entire career, and taught at the École polytechnique near Paris for 26 years. From 1994 till 2013, he served as the Director of the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHÉS), a French institute supporting advanced research in mathematics and theoretical physics with a recent...

Dr. Hu Xiaobing is a Marie Curie fellow at the School of Engineering, University of Warwick. He is going back to the UK now after two years of secondment at the State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Beijing Normal University (ESPRE-BNU). The State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology (Beijing Normal University) is an applied geology and ecology research laboratory. ESPRE scientists and...

Dr Heike Strelen was trained as an agricultural scientist at the University of Leipzig, specialising in animal production. She joined the German Research Foundation (DFG) in 1988 as the programme director for agricultural sciences. However, her interests have always ranged beyond this field. For instance, she coordinated a research group on nutrition and focused also on food safety. She was the head of the Division of Life Sciences at the DFG...

Fabio Rocca was born in Naples and graduated at the Politecnico di Milano in 1962. Devoted to his alma mater in Milan, he started his academic career at the Department of Electronic Engineering. Having developed his expertise in the field of digital signal processing and radar imaging, he is currently Emeritus Professor of Telecommunications. His research activities led to the application of innovative techniques in a variety of disciplines,...

Professor Herbert Jäckle has served as the Director of the Department of Molecular Biology at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen since 1991. Professor Jäckle is also the head of a research group at Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen; Chairman at the Department of Genetics and Microbiology at Ludwig Maxmilian University in Munich, and also a member of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in...

Sebastian Veg is the director of the CEFC (French Institute for Research on Contemporary China). He also serves as a Research Professor (directeur d'études) at the EHESS, Paris and Honorary Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong. He is also the director of the journal China Perspectives. His research deals with literature and politics in 20th century China, in particular the connection between literature, the public sphere and...