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Mario Monti to Chair the Committee to Find the Next ERC President

, by Fabio Todesco
The Bocconi President has been appointed by Commissioner Carlos Moedas to identify the leader of the most important research funding body in Europe

European Research, Science and Innovation Commissioner Carlos Moedas has appointed Bocconi President Mario Monti as Chair of the high-level search committee to find the next President of the European Research Council, the pan-European funding body for frontier research.

The committee will make recommendations to the European Commission in time for the next ERC president to take up duties on 1 January 2020, as successor to the current president, Professor Jean-Pierre Bourguignon.

Prof. Monti chairs a committee made up of seven experts including Helga Nowotny, Professor emeritus of Social Studies of Science, ETH Zurich, Former President of the ERC Scientific Council, Fabiola Gianotti, Director-General of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, Carl-Henrik Heldin, Director of the Ludwig Institute at Uppsala University, Chairman of the board of the Nobel Foundation, Jules A. Hoffmann, Chair of Integrative Biology, University of Strasbourg, 2011 Nobel Prize in Medicine, Alice Gast, President of Imperial College London, and Maciej Zylicz, President and Executive Director of the Foundation for Polish Science.

"I am delighted that Mr. Mario Monti has accepted my invitation to chair the search committee for the next ERC president", Commissioner Moedas said. "The ERC has become a powerhouse of science, and will be a key pillar in an even more ambitious research and innovation framework program that will follow Horizon 2020. I am confident that Mr. Monti and his distinguished group of people from European science and research can help us find the right person to lead the ERC to even greater success".

"It is a great honor for me to chair this search committee, which includes eminent personalities from science and research", said Mario Monti. "The ERC is a crystal-clear example of the European Union's value-added in such a strategic area as science and research. I would like to thank Commissioner Moedas for his invitation and all committee members for the time and energy they will dedicate to this search."

Established in 2007, 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.

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