New head for European research

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

Helga Nowotny
Image: ERC

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 than scientific excellence. (See our feature on the linkurl:ERC's future prospects;http://www.the-scientist.com/2010/2/1/30/1/ in this month's issue of the magazine.) Nowotny earned her degree in sociology from Columbia University, New York, and has held teaching and research positions at a number of international institutions in the UK, Germany and France. "I am confident that Prof Nowotny will lead with ambition this truly pioneering European project," said linkurl:Maire Geoghegan-Quinn,;http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/geoghegan-quinn/index_en.htm European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, in a statement.
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[February 2010]*linkurl:EU moves to unify science;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/56042/
[6th October 2009]