Raúl Ramos is Vice-Rector for Internationalisation Policy and Full Professor in Applied Economics at the University of Barcelona. He is a researcher at the Regional Quantitative Analysis Group (AQR-IREA) and IZA-LISER Research Fellow. He is also a member of the European University Association (EUA) Financial Advisory Group and Chair of the International Policy Group of the League of European Research Universities (LERU). His research focuses on labour markets from regional and international perspectives, with emphasis on globalization, inequality, unemployment and migration. He has published widely and contributed to projects for the European Commission, European Parliament, OECD, UNESCO and Eurofound. He is Co-Director of Labour Economics Letters and Associate Editor of Regional Studies, Regional Science. More at http://www.raulramos.cat
Prof. Michal Vrablík is Professor of Internal Medicine and Deputy Head of the Third Department of Internal Medicine at the First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, and General University Hospital in Prague. He currently serves as Vice-Rector for International Affairs at Charles University. His principal research and clinical interests include preventive cardiology, clinical lipidology, and the genetics of lipoprotein metabolism disorders.
Prof. Vrablík is President of the Czech Atherosclerosis Society, a Board Member of the Czech Society of Internal Medicine, and Vice-Chair of the Czech Association of Preventive Cardiology of the Czech Society of Cardiology. He was elected Fellow of the European Federation of Internal Medicine (FEFIM) in 2023 and Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology (FESC) in 2024. Since 2025, he has served as a member of the Board of the Czech Medical Academy. In 2024, he completed postgraduate training in healthcare management and was awarded the degree of Master of Healthcare Administration (MHA).
From 2012 to 2016, Prof. Vrablík served as a member of the Executive Committee of the European Atherosclerosis Society (EAS). He continues to contribute actively to the Society as a member of its Education and Awards Committees. Since 2018, he has been a Board Member of the International Lipid Expert Panel (ILEP). He also collaborates closely with the International Atherosclerosis Society (IAS), where he has served as Chair of the IAS Europe Regional Federation since January 2019.
Prof. Vrablík has authored or co-authored more than 400 peer-reviewed scientific publications. He also serves as an editorial board member and peer reviewer for several national and international scientific journals.
Jarosław Górniak is Vice-Rector for International Relations (since 2024) and First Deputy to the Rector at the Jagiellonian University, where he is Professor of Sociology and Head of the Department of Economic Sociology, Education and Social Research Methods. He has extensive experience in higher education reform, evidence-based policymaking, and managing complex institutional and sectoral processes involving academic communities, public authorities and international organisations. He led the preparation of the University’s development strategy, adopted unanimously by the Senate, and served as principal advisor in the preparation of the 2018 reform of higher education and science in Poland. He is currently a member of the team responsible for updating the national science policy (since 2025).
Nicoleta Laura Popa is professor of education sciences and vice-rector for international relations and academic and research partnerships at the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi in Romania.
She previously served as vice-dean for scientific research and international relations of the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences. Her research interests and expertise cover teacher education, technology in (higher) education, educational assessment and evaluation. She currently coordinates a MSCA-SE project on higher education policy, and several institutional development grants on education-related topics. She has held teaching and research fellowships in several European universities, with activities connected to the theme of education and transnational migration
João Ramalho-Santos is Vice-Rector for Research at the University of Coimbra. Full Professor at the Department of Life Sciences, he teaches and researches Development, Reproduction, Metabolism, Bioethics, Biomedicine and Science Communication. He is a reviewer and editor for over 100 scientific journals and international agencies and has (co-)authored over 200 scientific publications. His h-index is 42 (ISI), and he was recently considered one of the top 2% of influential researchers worldwide. He is the co-author of several comic books or comic book related works for both research purposes and scientific dissemination in partnership with the newspaper “PÚBLICO” or with the national agency for science outreach “Ciência Viva”.
Ludovic Thilly is a Full Professor of Physics at the University of Poitiers and, since 2012, has served as Vice-Rector in charge of European Strategy and the EC2U Alliance. A member of the Coimbra Group Executive Board since 2015, he was elected Chair in June 2017 and has been re-elected twice since. His current mandate runs until 2028.
Professor Thilly is the Coordinator General of the EC2U European University Alliance and co-coordinator of FOREU4ALL, the community of practice bringing together the 65 selected European University Alliances. He continues to teach and supervise PhD candidates. His research focuses on the deformation mechanisms of (nano-)materials. He has co-authored more than 80 publications in international peer-reviewed journals, including four book chapters, and has delivered over 60 invited lectures at international conferences and institutions.
Daniel Donoghue is Professor in the Department of Geography, Co-director of Durham University Institute for Data Science at Durham University. He recently served as University Dean for Internationalisation and as Deputy Head of Faculty in the Faculty of Social Sciences & Health. He has published over 100 articles and books and pursued research in the field of deforestation and forest degradation, land use change and archaeology. In 2009 he shared the Talbert Abrams and the ERDAS awards for the best paper in remote sensing from ASPRS, and in 2012 was awarded the President’s Prize by the Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Society.
Beatrix Busse is Professor of English Linguistics and the Vice-Rector for Student Affairs and Teaching at the University of Cologne. From 2011 to 2019 she held the Chair of English Linguistics at Heidelberg University where she was appointed as Vice-Rector for Teaching and Student Affairs twice, from 2013 to 2019. Beatrix Busse has a broad range of research interests that include stylistics, corpus linguistics, history of English and historical pragmatics, socio-linguistics, language in urban space with a focus on Brooklyn, New York, and transfer linguistics.
Beatrix Busse is part of the steering committee and the person responsible on behalf of the University of Cologne for the EUniWell Alliance – the European University for Well-Being.
Coco Norén is Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Uppsala University and Professor of French. She is the former Dean of the Faculty of Languages (2014-2020). After receiving her PhD in 1999, she was a Pro Futura Fellow at the Swedish Collegium of Advanced Studies (2002-2008) and an Academy Research Fellow at the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities (2008-2013). In 2015 she was elected a member of the Research Leads Group in the Matariki Network (2015-2020) and she chairs Uppsala University’s Steering Committee for ENLIGHT, a European University Alliance, since 2021. Her field of research is argumentation, text linguistics and polyphony in modern French, in particular European parliamentary discourse and spoken practices. She joined the Executive Board in June 2021.
Antonella Forlino is full Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Pavia. She teaches in the Degree Course in Medicine and Surgery (in the Harvey and Golgi Courses) and in the Degree Course in Medical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology. Between 2019 and 2025, she served as Pro Rector for Internationalization and President of the Center for Global Strategic Engagement (GLOBEC) of the University of Pavia. She coordinates research projects funded by national and international agencies. For years she has been studying the biochemical and molecular basis of hereditary bone diseases with a translational approach.