Jean-Eric PAQUET
Director-General, DG Research & Innovation

Jean-Eric Paquet has been working as the Director-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD) since April 2018.
Mr Paquet started working with the European Commission in 1993 and since then has worked in various areas throughout the Commission.
From 2002 until 2004 he was the Deputy Head of Cabinet of former Commissioner for Research, Philippe Busquin. From 2007 until 2011 he worked as a Head of Unit within the Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE) before becoming the Director of DG MOVE’s TEN-T and Smart Transport directorate. Mr Paquet joined The Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG Enlargement) in 2013. He took over the Directorate in charge of relations with Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo and later added Montenegro and the FYROM to his portfolio. Before starting his current position as Director-General, Mr Paquet served as one of the three Deputy Secretaries-General of the Juncker Commission and was responsible for Better Regulation and Policy Coordination.

Isidoros KARATZAS
Head of the Research Ethics and Integrity Sector, European Commission, DG Research & Innovation

Isidoros Karatzas is a biochemist and psychologist by training. After joining the European Commission, he was responsible for the ex-post evaluation of the Framework Programme. Isidoros managed the risk governance research file and was the scientific secretary of the European Research Advisory Board (EURAB), a high-level body that advised the Commission on research policy and research priorities. Currently, he is the head of the Research Ethics and Integrity Sector in DG Research and Innovation. As head of the Sector, he established the Ethics Appraisal process for the research Framework Programmes, initiated advanced training courses on research ethics for Commission staff and the research community and has set up the first European system on ethics checks and follow-up. In addition, the sector oversees the research integrity policy activities, including the relations with relevant stakeholders such as ALLEA, LERU, Science Europe and the business community.

Alena BUYX
Chair of the German Ethics Council

Professor Buyx is the Director of the Institute of History and Ethics in Medicine at the Technical University of Munich and holds the Chair of Ethics in Medicine and Health Technologies. Her research spans the whole field of biomedical ethics, with a particular focus on ethics of medical innovation and health technologies, research ethics, questions of solidarity and justice in health care. She has extensive expertise in theoretical ethical analysis as well as in empirical, mixed-methods studies and policy development. She is keen on pursuing an interdisciplinary, embedded-ethics approach and collaborates regularly with clinical colleagues as well as with colleagues from many other disciplines. Professor Buyx sits on a number of high-level national and international ethics bodies concerned with policy development and implementation, and consults for various international research consortia and policy initiatives. She sits on the WHO Group on Global Standards for Genome Editing since 2019, she has been a member of the German Ethics Council since 2016 and was elected Chair in 2020.

Hrvoje ŠTEFANČIĆ, Ph.D.
Vice-Rector for Science, Catholic University of Croatia

Dr. Štefančić is a Professor of Physics at the Catholic University of Croatia, where he has served as Vice-Rector for Science since 2012. His research interests comprise high energy physics, physical cosmology and complex systems science. In the field of physical cosmology, he studied problems of accelerated cosmic expansion and related questions of dark energy, cosmological constant and vacuum energy, modifications of gravity at cosmic distances, and unification of dark matter and dark energy. He also lead and participated in many interdisciplinary research collaborations related to the research of complex network structure and dynamics and processes on complex networks. His particular interest is interdisciplinary applications of methods and approaches of theoretical physics. He lead numerous initiatives of establishment and development of research at the Catholic University of Croatia, including institutional accreditations for research activity, project applications, building internal research regulations, infrastructure and facilities and development of research quality assurance. 

Tome ANTIČIĆ, Ph.D.
State Secretary for science and EU funds, Croatian Ministry of Science and Education

Dr. Tome Antičić became in 2017 the State Secretary for science and EU funds at the Croatian Ministry of Science and Education. Before his post at the Ministry, dr. Tome Anticic was the director of the Rudjer Boskovic Institute (RBI), the most prestigious and the largest research institute in Croatia in basic sciences, with 850 employees. He introduced an emphasis on transforming RBI into a much more competitive scientific institution. As a result, RBI, with 5% of Croatian scientists, now has 50% of Croatian Horizon 2020 projects. Dr. Tome Anticic was also active in numerous Horizon 2020 initiatives and projects.

Zvonimir KOPORC, Ph.D.
Catholic University of Croatia
Chair of the 25^th Forum of the National Ethics Councils (NEC) and the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE

Dr.  Zvonimir Koporc is Professor in Physiology at the Catholic University of Croatia (CUC). His PhD in chemistry was awarded by the Technical University of Vienna, Austria. He has published extensively on immunology and research ethics. His primary consultative activities are in ethics and in life sciences. Zvonimir has acted as consultant, adviser and/or delivered training on research ethics at the European and national level. Currently, he is a partner in an EC H2020 funded Project, PRO-RES, which aims to promote ethics and integrity in non-medical sciences for the benefit of supporting policymakers’ use of evidence.