David Sweeney
After studying Statistics at the University of Aberdeen, David worked at two BBSRC research institutes, as a consultant statistician. David was a Director at Royal Holloway, University of London, before moving into university leadership as Vice-Principal in 2004.
He joined HEFCE in 2008 as Director and led the development and implementation of the first Research Excellence Framework. He was responsible for research policy and funding, knowledge exchange and university/business relations.
In May 2017 he was appointed the first Executive Chair of Research England which is one of the nine research councils that forms UK Research and Innovation. Research England is biggest research funder in the UK with responsibility for university block-grant funding for research and knowledge exchange. He is co-chair of the Implementation Task Force for Plan S, cOAlition S
David was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Aberdeen in 2012, was Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Newcastle, NSW in 2015 and is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.
Jean-Pierre Finance
Professor Jean-Pierre Finance was the President of Henri Poincaré University, Nancy, France from 1994 to 1999 and from 2004 to 2011. For two years (2007-2008) he was the President of the CPU (The French Rector Conference). He actively participated to the project aiming to merge this 4 universities into the single University of Lorraine created in January 1st2012.
He has been Board member of EUA (European University Association) from 2009 to 2013and Council member from 2006 to 2016. From 2011 to 2015 he was the chair of the nomination committee of this association. Currently he is the Chair of the EUA's Open Access Experts Group and of the Big Deal High Level Group. He has been President and still member of the Councils of various French organizations devoted to digital publications (COUPERIN & ABES)
He is also member of the Council of the Magna Charta Observatory; as well as President and to digital highspeed network (RENATER) and as member of the board of the new French Office for Scientific Integrity (OFIS).
Further to his Maths studies, Professor Finance opted for informatics, which specialised in programming language semantics and formal methods in software engineering. He got his PhD in 1974 and his “Doctorat d’Etat” in 1979.
From 1985 to 1994, he was the head of the Computer Science Research Centre of Nancy, so-called CRIN.
Anna Lundén
Anna Lundén works at the National Library of Sweden, heading the Division for National Coordination of Libraries. This division handles the national library consortia for universities and research institutes, Bibsam, which is negotiating e-resources with all major publishers. In parallel the development of openaccess.se is managed within this division.
She is also the Swedish representative in the EUA (European University Association) high-level group on Big Deals, participates in the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) and takes part in the INTACT/ESAC initiative aiming at establishing transparent and efficient procedures to manage article processing charges. Before working at the National Library, Anna gained a great deal of experience from the commercial side of the business, having been the Nordic sales manager for one of the largest database vendor and subscription agents.
Jan Konvalinka
Doc. RNDr. Jan Konvalinka, CSc. is Vice-Rector for Research in Charles University. As a Senior Lecturer he researches the role of proteases in the regulation of biological processes and studies medically interesting enzymes. He has focused mostly on the research of the proteins of the HIV virus, especially the virus protease that is responsible for the maturation and spreading of the virus, and also on the research of neuropeptidases and tumour-associated antigens of the prostate. He is an author of more than 90 original research papers published in international journals.
For his research activities, he has received a number of awards. He is a member of the Learned Society of the Czech Republic.
Peter H. Seeberger
Director at the Max-Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam and Professor at the Free University of Berlin in 2009. In addition, he serves as honorary Professor at the University of Potsdam. From 2003-2014 he was Affiliate Professor at the Sanford-Burnham Institute for Medical Research (La Jolla, USA). He is a member of the governing bodies of the Max-Planck Society (“Senate”) and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (“Rat”).
Professor Seeberger’s research on the chemistry and biology of carbohydrates, carbohydrate vaccine development and continuous flow synthesis of drug substances spans a broad range of topics from engineering to immunology and has been documented in over 500 peer-reviewed journal articles, four books, more than 40 patents, over 200 published abstracts and more than 850 invited lectures. This work was recognized with more than 35 international awards and international organizations. In 2013 he was elected to the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences.
Peter H. Seeberger greatly supports the idea of open access publishing as the Editor-in-Chief of the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry and serves on the editorial advisory boards of many other journals. Through his work in the area of neglected diseases, Peter Seeberger has become involved in philanthropic causes. He is a co-founder of the Tesfa-Ilg “Hope for Africa” Foundation that aims at improving health care in Ethiopia that recently helped to build a bed-net factory and established an IT training center. The research in the Seeberger laboratory has given rise to nine successful companies in the USA, Switzerland, Denmark and Germany.
Gareth O'Neill
Gareth O'Neill is a linguist at Leiden University and former president of the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers (Eurodoc). He has represented researchers in the Netherlands and across Europe for many years. Gareth was involved in the Dutch National Plan for Open Science, is an expert on Open Science for the European Commission, and is a member of the H2020 Advisory Group on Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. He is currently involved in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and is an official Ambassador for Plan S to cOAlition S.
Eva Hnátková
Eva Hnatkova is President the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers (Eurodoc), which currently represents 28 national associations from 26 European countries representing early career researchers. Eva is very excited about research policy at national or international level promoting open science approach. She obtained her PhD in Process Engineering at Tomas Bata University in Zlín, Czech Republic.
Martin Svoboda
Ing. Martin Svoboda is director of the National Library of Technology (NTK) in Prague. He has a MS in computer engineering (1965) and is interested in text processing and information retrieval systems. He has been a lifelong advocate of co-operation in sharing information resources with help of ICT. He has experienced of library automation in the Czech National Library, Czech and Slovak Library Information Network – A. W. Mellon Foundation supported international project and later through Open Society Library Network Programme in post-communist countries.
As a director of NTK, he negotiated “big deals” with publishers for the entire Czech scholarly and R&D community. He is a member of the LIBER Architecture Group Forum; ELAG Programme Committee; Journal of Documentation Editorial Board; Czech NCP in SCOAP3 project. He has moved the National Library of Technology closer to academia, is the co-author and Head of Experts Group for the CzechELib project.
Martin is also co-author of USS – an SDI system processing around 3000 profiles on dozens of abstract services (CAS, CIN, INSPEC, INIS, Compendex, PA, FSTA, Excerpta Medica, Derwent, etc.) back in mid 1970s. He is the co-father of the CASLIN project for Czech and Slovak Libraries, and the author of concept of the Virtual Polytechnic Library – a Czech cooperative resource sharing system and its innovative version Získej/Acquire.
Pavel Doleček
PhDr. Pavel Doleček, PhD. is Deputy Minister for Higher Education, Science and Research at the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports.
Petr Dvořák
Prof. Ing. Petr Dvořák, CSc., Deputy Chairman of R&D Council, is professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Masaryk University, Brno. He was on long-term professional stays at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research RIKEN, Tsukuba, Japan, and Department of Developmental Biology, INRA, France.
Currently, he is the head of Department of Biology, Faculty of Medicine. Simultaneously he works as the vice-rector for research at the Masaryk University. He has been involved in the Czech dialogue on stem cell policy since 2003 when his group derived several lines of human pluripotent stem cells. Petr Dvorak is interested in growth factor signalling in mouse and human stem cells and several specific topics related to their differentiation, genomic stability, and use for drug development and/or disease modelling.
He has published more than 60 highly cited research articles and reviews in the biology and use of stem cells and he has worked, often as a coordinator, on many national and international projects focused on development of tools for biomedical application of stem cell research and contextual regulatory issues.
