The European Research Council (ERC), today (February 19) elected social scientist linkurl:Helga Nowotny;http://www.helga-nowotny.eu/ as president of the agency. Nowotny, an emeritus social scientist at ETH Zurich, served as one of two vice presidents of the ERC during the tenure of its previous president, linkurl:Fotis Kafatos,;http://openwetware.org/wiki/Kafatos:Fotis_C._Kafatos who left the post last month to linkurl:pursue his research.;http://erc.europa.eu/pdf/ANNOUNCEMENT_Prof_Kafatos.pdf
The ERC is Europe's central science funding agency, equivalent to the US National Institutes of Health, with a budget expected to exceed 1 billion Euros next year. The agency is being watched by the scientific community for whether it will be able to stay true to its goal of competitively funding the best science. Some worry that the executive agency, the bureaucratic arm of the ERC that has closer ties to the individual member states of the Union, will pressure the Scientific Council into funding research based on political agendas rather...
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Image: ERC |
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