EUTOPIA Board of Presidents and the Alliance Management Board renewed

Significant changes were anticipated in the governance of EUTOPIA at the start of 2025, particularly regarding the leadership of the Board of Presidents and the management of the alliance. However, Daniel David's appointment as Chair of the Board of Presidents, replacing Tiziana Lippiello, has been postponed for the time being due to his recent appointment as the new Romanian Minister of National Education and Research in the final days of 2024. In a LinkedIn post from Babeș-Bolyai University, Daniel David announced that Adrian Petrușel, the vice president responsible for research and innovation, will serve as interim rector. David anticipates resuming his full responsibilities at the university after his ministerial mandate concludes, which is expected to happen following the upcoming presidential elections in Romania scheduled for next spring.

For the record, Daniel David is a professor in Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy and led 2007 to 2012 the Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at his University. He also holds an adjunct professorship at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and directs the Research Programme at the Albert Ellis Institute in New York. Since being elected rector in 2020, David has become a prominent voice in academia, having been inducted into the Romanian Academy and Academia Europaea in 2022. David founded the first school of cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) in Romania, adhering to internationally recognised principles. As a Fellow of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy in the USA, he also represents Romania on the Social Sciences Standing Committee at the European Science Foundation.

The EUTOPIA Board of Presidents

The question of who will chair the EUTOPIA Board of Presidents will be discussed in the forthcoming weeks. The Board has decided to reappoint Professor Stuart Croft, the Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Warwick, as Vice-Chair. Croft is a political scientist specialising in international security studies. He was Director of the ESRC’s New Security Challenges Programme for eight years, a £6.5 million programme that supported nearly 50 research projects at various UK universities and other institutions. The latest initiative under that programme is to support a series of projects investigating Radicalisation and Violence around the world.

The Alliance Management Board

EUTOPIA’s Alliance Management Board gathers the heads of all EUTOPIA European-funded projects, mainly the vice-rectors in charge of the alliance in each University. Their Chair and Vice-Chair for the two last years were Professor Balint Marko, Vice-Rector for Competitivity, Quality and Non-traditional Education at the University of Babeș-Bolyai, and Professor Luciana Radut-Gaghi, Vice-President for international relations and Strategic partnerships at CY Cergy Paris Université. They are replaced for the 2025-2026 period by Professor Helena Ramalhinho Lourenço, Vice-rector for Internationalisation at the Pompeu Fabra University-Barcelona (UPF), and by Professor Karin Vanderkerken, vice-rector for Internationalisation at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).

Helena Ramalhinho Lourenço teaches various undergraduate, master’s and PhD programs at the UPF and other universities. She is currently the director of the Business Analytics Research Group. Her research interests include Operations Research, Scheduling, Combinatorial Optimization, Metaheuristics, Iterated Local Search, Heuristic Search Optimization, Vehicle Routing, Supply Chain Management, Logistics and Operations Management. Karin Vanderkerken is a professor at the Department of Biomedical Sciences. She is active as a scientist at the VUB Brussels Health Campus in Jette. Among other things, she is the chair of the Oncology Cluster.