Nicola Spaldin becomes member of the ERC Science Council

The European Commission today appointed five outstanding scientists as new members of the Scientific Council of the European Research Commission (ERC), including Nicola Spaldin. The professor of materials theory at ETH Zurich is only the third person from Switzerland to sit on this body, after Rolf Zinkernagel (University of Zurich) and Helga Nowotny (ETH Zurich).

In her career, Spaldin has received several major science awards. She also obtained an ERC Advanced Grant under the 7th Research Framework Programme (2007-2013). Under Horizon 2020 (20214-2020), she is one of the co-Principal investigators in the ERC Synergy Grant "Hero", which also involves one principal investigator each from PSI and EPFL.

“I'm a huge fan of the ERC and its mission to support the best fundamental research, without constraint in the choice of direction,” says Nicola Spaldin. “It's an honor for me to be able to support this mission and in turn the European scientific community as a member of the Scientific Council. I also hope that my appointment will provide me with a platform to advocate for the importance of international, and particularly trans-European, scientific cooperation both in my adoptive Switzerland and my native England.”

In addition to Nicola Spaldin, four other people were elected: Liselotte Højgaard, University of Copenhagen, and Dirk Inzé, Ghent University, in the field of Life Sciences, and Alice Valkárová, Charles University Prague, and Professor Rodrigo Martins, NOVA University of Lisbon, from the fields of Physical Sciences and Engineering. The new Science Councillors will take office on 1 January 2021.

The ERC Scientific Council, composed of 22 distinguished scientists and scholars representing the European scientific community, is the independent governing body of the ERC. Its main role is setting the ERC strategy and selecting the peer review evaluators.