Young Leaders Academy Call 2021 - Cohort 1
- Complete call information
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Young Leaders Academy is open to early to mid-career researchers, preferably between 2 to 12 years after PhD completion. YLA Fellows will be appointed for a period of 2 years.
Applicants should already be formally appointed with one of the Universities of the EUTOPIA Alliance and hold a tenured or tenure-track position or major research fellowship;
Opening date for applications: 30 April 2021
Closing date for applications: 30 June 2021For full information on the call and the application and selection criteria,
please consult the documents below:
CALL DESCRIPTION (link)
APPLICATION FORM (link)
The EUTOPIA Young Leaders Academy will enrol the first cohort of 18 Fellows, starting in September 2021. A second call for applications is scheduled to open in early 2023.
Contact Information for local managers of the EUTOPIA Young Leaders Academy:Vrije Universiteit Brussel: Cristina Macovei, R&D European liaison office, Cristina.Macovei@vub.be
CY Cergy Paris University: Kate Robinson, International Scientific Development Office, katy.robinson@cyu.fr
University of Ljubljana: Polona Juvancic, Research and Development Centre, polona.juvancic@uni-lj.si
Pompeu Fabra University: María Gil, European Projects Manager & Research Advisor, maria.gil@upf.edu
University of Gothenburg: Henrik Lindskog, Research Support Grants and Innovation Office, lindskog@gu.se
University of Warwick: John Burden, Institute of Advanced Studies, j.p.burden@warwick.ac.uk
Meet the YLA Fellows:
Dr. Margit Alt MurphyUniversity of Gothenburg
Department of Clinical Neuroscience - Rehabilitation Medicine
Margit Alt Murphy is Associate Professor at the Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Gothenburg, and Associate PI of the Rehabilitation Medicine research group including more than 20 active researchers. Senior Consultant Physiotherapist and R&D leader with 15-years clinical experience in neurological rehabilitation at Sahlgrenska University Hospital. Recognized researcher in the field of stroke rehabilitation and upper extremity assessment and rehabilitation. Fellow of European Stroke Organization and core group member of the SRRR Second Roundtable on Standardized Measurement of Quality of Upper Limb Movement After Stroke. Collaborations include technology developers and European network COST Action on neurorehabilitation and robotics. Chair of the Neurology section of Swedish Physiotherapist.
Dr. David BeckweeVrije Universiteit Brussel
Department of Physical Education and Physical Therapy
David Beckwée (MSc Rehabilitation Sciences (2004)) started his academic career in 2009 after working 5 years as a physiotherapist. He obtained his PhD in 2015 and was recently appointed as a full-time associate professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He is head of the Rehabilitation Research group (https:// rere.research.vub.be/ ), bringing together >30 researchers who aim to provide the best scientific evidence for rehabilitation strategies to improve one’s quality of life by optimizing physical functioning. Currently, David obtained >2.500.000€ of research funding, is (co-) promotor of 13 PhD students and he already supervised three PhD students to completion. He co-authored >45 peer-reviewed published papers and 2 handbooks for clinicians. David’s personal field of interest is focused on unravelling the mechanisms of action of the beneficial effects of exercise in health and disease. He is always interested in investigating interdisciplinary research questions if they relate to physical activity, healthy ageing, personalized healthcare, or technology.
Dr. Nejc bezakUniversity of Ljubljana
Department of Civil and Geodetic Engineering - UNESCO Chair on Water-related Disaster Risk Reduction
Nejc is an assistant professor at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering. He finished his PhD in 2016. His research work is composed of two main parts. The first part is focused on the hydrological processes, mostly on the rainfall-runoff relationship. This includes hydrological (i.e. rainfall-runoff) modelling, climate change investigations, statistical analysis of past measured data, field measurements using state-of-the-art equipment, etc. The second part of his research work is focused on different elements of the erosion-sedimentation cycle. This includes soil erosion modelling, rainfall erosivity investigations, erosion and sediment transport measurements, landslides triggering prediction, debris flow modelling and in- investigations of the historical events, etc. He has published more than 40 scientific papers that are indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) database and his H-index is 12 with the total number of citations equal to 530 according to the WoS. Furthermore, several of his papers have also been published in the Slovenian language in local journals. He has performed reviews for more than 30 international scientific journals and research agencies. Moreover, he is actively involved in multiple national and international and research and applied projects. He is currently the leader of the WG1 of the Land4Flood COST action. Furthermore, he teaches Hydrological modelling, Drainage and Irrigation, Engineering Hydraulics, courses. He has supervised and co-supervised more than 10 students at master and bachelor levels and is currently mentoring 1 PhD student.
Dr. Jaka CepecUniversity of Ljubljana
School of Economics and Business - RCEF Research Center
Jaka Cepec holds a PhD in Law & Economics of Insolvency law at the University of Ljubljana, School of Law. Currently, he is an associate professor of Law and the School of Business and Economics University of Ljubljana. His research focus is Insolvency law, Empirical legal research and Law Economics. In 2018 he was awarded a postdoc Fulbright Scholarship, visiting Washington & Lee University in Virginia US. Currently, he is engaged in a national research project on Law of Debtors and Creditors - A normative and empirical legal analysis. He and his team are researching the interconnectivity and differences in individual enforcement and in bankruptcy.
Dr. Ivó CocaPompeu Fabra University-Barcelona
Law School
Ivó Coca is a tenure-track researcher (Ramón y Cajal postdoctoral fellow) at Pompeu Fabra University’s Law School (Barcelona) and an affiliated researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law (Freiburg). His research interests lie in the foundations of criminal law, in particular issues regarding the theory of crime and criminalization, current issues at the intersection of criminal law, philosophy and ethics, as well as theoretical questions concerning property and white-collar crimes. His research is focused not only on national law but takes the transnational perspective into ac- count. He holds a PhD (Extraordinary PhD Award / International Mention), a Masters in Laws (LLM) and a B.A. in Law from Pompeu Fabra University. He has been Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law, and visiting scholar at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Dr. Anna DragošUniversity of Ljubljana
Biotechnical Faculty - Chair of Microbiology
Anna Dragos’ overarching research concentrates on the deep understanding of ecological and evolutionary factors that influence bacterial reproduction and survival with special emphasis on bacterial viruses, called phages. As a member of Microbiology Chair (Department of Food, Science and Technology) she is heading a research project founded by ARRS (Slovenian Research Agency) focusing on host control by phage. She and her team investigate the extent to which temperate phages alter the behaviour of their bacterial host and what the molecular mechanisms and evolutionary forces behind host control by phages are. She graduated from Biotechnology at the University of Wroclaw (Poland) in 2009, defended her PhD thesis in 2014 at the University of Ljubljana, and spent several years abroad as a postdoctoral fellow funded by an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship (Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany) and H.C. Oersted fellowship (Technical University of Denmark). Besides building up an independent research group, she reviews for research journals, serves as a guest lecturer in courses, serves as a member of various international committees, organizes conferences, supports early career researchers and organizes local research events.
Dr. Ahmed EissaUniversity of Warwick
Department of Chemistry
Dr Eissa is a Senior Research Fellow (group leader) in the Department of Chemistry, working across, Chemistry, Engineering and Life Sciences to develop bioactive and bio-inspired macromolecules and biomaterials. Ahmed studied Chemistry for his first degree at Ain-Shams University in Cairo graduating with Honours. Following a three year spell in pro squash and badminton tours, he returned to science to pursue a career in academia. In 2005, he successfully completed his M.Sc. in Polymer Chemistry at Ain–Shams University, Cairo and was appointed as a Research Associate in the National Research Centre in Cairo. In 2006, Ahmed was awarded a fully-funded Ph.D. studentship for his Ph.D. studies at the University of Durham, UK, graduating in 2011 with a thesis titled “Synthesis and Characterisation of Novel Biopolymers via ‘Click’ Chemistry”, under the supervision of Dr. Ezat Khosravi. Between 2011 and 2014, as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the group of Prof. Neil Cameron at Durham, he was able to translate his skills to design macromolecules and materials that interfere or mimic biological processes, leading to therapeutic or biotechnological applications. In September 2014, Ahmed took up a research fellowship position in Engineering at Warwick University, UK, with an adjunct position at Monash University, Australia. In this role, he embarked on an independent research career in the area of Biomedical Polymer Materials. Following a promotion to a Senior Research Fellow, in 2018, Ahmed took a group leader position in the Department of Chemistry at Warwick, working with Prof. David Haddleton.
Dr. Muriel EpsteinCY Cergy Paris Université
Department of Education - EMA - École, Mutations, Apprentissages
Muriel Epstein is an Associate professor in Education Sciences at CY Cergy Paris Université. Her research group, EMA (Ecole Mutations Apprentissage), works on school transitions and learning in general. She teaches mainly teachers and professionals in the education system. Before entering academia, Muriel was a maths teacher and statistician. She used both qualitative and quantitative methods in her research. Her PhD is in Sociology and dealt with school dropouts. Her research focus has evolved from exclusion to inclusion, focusing in particular on how digital technologies can help to make schools more inclusive and leverage Teachers' professional development. She is interested in the development of hybrid training for future teachers, for innovation and inclusion of students.
Dr. Cleo GoyvaertsVrije Universiteit Brussel
Department of Medicine and Pharmacy
Cleo Goyaerts describes herself as a passionate researcher, captivated by the potential of the immune system to de- feat cancer. She obtained her PhD in Biomedical Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in 2015. Following that, she broadened her horizons as a postdoctoral fellow at the Tisch Cancer Institute, Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine New York, where she developed a strong interest in lung cancer immunotherapy and 3D in vitro tumor modelling. Since 2018, she is working as an Assistant Professor at the Laboratory for Molecular and Cellular Therapy at the VUB, where the teams are tempting to unravel the missing links within the lung tumor microenvironment that are responsible for the sobering response rates to immunotherapy today. As a people person, she enjoys planting complementary and interdisciplinary collaborations to fuel each other’s interests and enjoy science together. Finally, she grasps every chance to share her enthusiasm for antitumor immunology with peers and non-peers under the guise of 'knowledge is power and sharing is caring'!
Dr. Hippolyte GrosCY Cergy Paris Université
Cognitive science – Psychology - PARAGRAPHE – Psycho- logie, information et Communication
Hippolyte Gros is an Associate Professor in cognitive sciences at CY Cergy Paris Université. With a focus on cognitive and educational psychology, his research interests include problem-solving, numerical cognition, arithmetic reasoning, cognitive flexibility, mathematics education, and educational myths. During his PhD, he investigated the interpretative processes at play in arithmetic reasoning and word problem-solving. More specifically, he studied the role of daily-life knowledge on the encoding of numerical information, the representation of arithmetic word problems, and the use of solving strategies. In an effort to identify how to foster transfer from one learning situation to another, he gathered both behavioral data (success rates, response times, problem drawings, etc.) and physiological data (saccadic eye movements, pupil dilation) in several activities ranging from pro- blem classification and analogy making to sentence recall and group reasoning. He worked with children, teachers, and math experts to show the universal nature of some reasoning biases. He is now looking to further investigate this issue from an intercultural perspective. Ultimately, his work aims at developing new teaching strategies to be used in schools.
Dr. Andi HoxhajUniversity of Warwick
Warwick Law School
Dr. Andi Hoxhaj is an early career legal scholar at the Warwick Law School, University of Warwick and teaches in the European Union Law module. He is an award-winning teacher in EU law; a recipient of the Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence 2021. Dr Hoxhaj was awarded his PhD in 2017 at the University of Warwick and his areas of focus are corruption, governance, civil society, the rule of law, European integration and engagement in the Western Balkans. He is an author of book titled ‘The EU Anti-Corruption Policy: A Reflexive Governance Approach (Routledge, 2020). Dr Hoxhaj has also published peer-review articles on the rule of law, anti-corruption, academic freedom, the EU– Western Balkans engagement and enlargement policy. In April 2018, Dr Hoxhaj was awarded the British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award for a project titled ‘The UK—Western Balkans post-Brexit’. His insight on corruption, good governance, EU enlargement policy, and the migration of young people in the Western Balkans were referred to in a parliamentary inquiry report ‘The UK and the future of the Western Balkans’ published by the United Kingdom Parliament in 2018. He tweets at @Andi_Hoxhaj
Dr. Helena KraffUniversity of Gothenburg
Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts - Design / Centre for Tourism
Helena Kraff (PhD in design) is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts at the University of Gothenburg. She is active as a teacher in the master’s programme Embedded Design, in which students practice the integration of design in organizational contexts. Helena’s main research areas are participatory and collaborative design, which through transdisciplinary research projects are applied within other fields and disciplines, such as tourism, migration, and integration studies. Helena is currently engaged in the project The role of tourism in multicultural societies (TiMS), and is active as a board member at the Centre for Tourism (CFT) at the University of Gothenburg. Recent publications in design research deal with pitfalls of participation, agonistic participation, and diversity of participation. Publications outside the design disciplines discuss the roles of social enterprises and community-based organizations in socioeconomic development, participatory place branding, and effects of transdisciplinary collaboration.
Dr. Subhash LakshminarayanaUniversity of Warwick
Engineering
Dr Subhash Lakshminarayana is an associate professor at the University of Warwick, UK. His research interests include cyber-physical system security, power grid optimization/control and wireless communications. He serves as Associate Editor at the IEEE Internet of Things and IET smart grid journal. His works have been selected among the Top 5 papers published in IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid 2021, the Best conference paper candidates at the IEEE PESGM - 2015 and IEEE Globecom 2014 conferences. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and a Member of IET. His research has been funded by EPSRC, Innovate UK and the EUTOPIA UK-European Academic Alliance.
Dr. Natalija MajsovaUniversity of Ljubljana
School of Social Sciences and Humanities - Centre for Cultural and Religious Studies
Natalija Majsova is an associate professor in cultural studies at the University of Ljubljana. Her research interests include memory studies, cultural theory, post-socialist cultural studies, and film studies. She is currently the main co-editor of the Družboslovne razprave/Social Science Forum journal and principal investigator on the ARIS-HRZZ Slovenian-Croatian research project MEMPOP (2023-2026) that studies the mnemonic aesthetics and strategies at work in contemporary popular culture. She holds a Ph.D. in cultural studies from the University of Ljubljana (2015). In 2014, she was a visiting researcher at Freie Universität Berlin. In 2017-2018, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Centre for Visual Poetics at the University of Antwerp. In 2018-2020, she was a researcher at the Catholic University of Louvain, where she took part in the consortium project B-magic: The Magic Lantern and Its Cultural Impact in Belgium 1830-1940. Her work has appeared in international academic journals, such as Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, Popular Music and Society, and Družboslovne razprave, and in edited volumes published by Brill, Routledge, and Palgrave Macmillan. Her book Science Fiction Cinema and the Space Age: Memorable Futures was published with Lexington Books in 2021.
Dr. Lela MélonPompeu Fabra University
Faculty of Law
Dr. Lela Mélon, a former Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, and the 2021 Emerging Sustainability Leader Awardee (by World Sustainability Foundation), has a legal and economics background. She is the former Executive Director of the Planetary Wellbeing Institutional Framework at the Pompeu Fabra University and the academic director and a professor of the postgraduate programme Sustainability Transition Management and Climate Emergency at ESCI-UPF, she is specialized in EU law, with a main focus on corporate conduct and sustainability, on which she published the book Shareholder Primacy and Global Business (Routledge 2018). She is currently researching policy coherence for sustainability at the EU level, focusing on corporate law policies as well as the challenges of policy and legislative barriers in the existing EU business law framework for sustainable corporate conduct and sustainable outcomes. Besides being active in the academic field, she created and implemented a three-step systemic approach towards sustainability, which entailed the insertion of separate sustainable corporate law course in academic curricula and a simultaneous sustainable revision of the existing and well-established academic curricula in economics and law. Additionally to the abovementioned, Dr. Lela Mélon is a lecturer at the Masters on Planetary Health (carried out jointly by the UPF, UOC and IS Global) in the course of Global and multilevel governance in planetary health; a lecturer at ESSEC Paris in the course Sustainable Finance and Law in Sustainability Management; a lecturer at CEI Barcelona in the course Companies as actors in Sustainable Development; and a lecturer at UPF Masters in Global and European Law in the course Sustainable Business Law, which she developed in the framework of her Marie Curie funded SCOM project. Currently researching EU policy coherence for sustainability, she is also cooperating with the industry as a senior sustainability consultant at msg global solutions.
Dr. Stefan RoesnerUniversity of Warwick
Department of Chemistry
Stefan Roesner received his Diploma in chemistry from Philipps-University Marburg, Germany (2010). Following this, he moved to the UK and completed a Ph.D. in organic chemistry with Prof. Varinder Aggarwal at the University of Bristol focussing on the stereoselective synthesis of small molecules (2014). He conducted postdoctoral studies in the US at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the direction of Prof. Stephen Buchwald where his research focus shifted towards palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions conducted in collaboration with Novartis (2015-2016). He returned to the UK to become Senior Research Fellow in the Shipman group in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick (2016-2021). He was promoted to become Assistant Professor at Warwick (2021-2024) and became Fellow of the first cohort of the EUTOPIA Young Leaders Academy (2021-2023). He has completed a PGA in technology enhanced learning and is Fellow of Advance HE. In April 2024, he became Senior Lecturer in Organic Chemistry at the School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Science at Liverpool John Moores University. The research interest of his group is synthetic organic chemistry with a particular focus on heterocyclic chemistry, catalysis, organometallic chemistry, and continuous-flow processing of reactive intermediates.
Dr. Birgit Van PuymbroeckVrije Universiteit Brussel
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Birgit Van Puymbroeck is Assistant Professor (tenure-track) in literature in English and research methodology at VUB. She teaches courses in research methodology, European literature, and literature in English. She received her PhD in 2012 from Ghent University and has held visiting fellowships at Yale University, Queen Mary University of London, and the University of Edin- burgh. She is the author of Modernist Literature and European Identity (Routledge 2020) and of various articles and book chapters on literary modernism, transnational networks, and media (especially periodicals and radio). Together with Marysa Demoor and Cedric Van Dijck, she is co-editing the Edinburgh Companion to First World War Periodicals. Together with Inge Arteel, she is working on a project on audio literature. Birgit is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies, the Belgian Young Academy, and the Young Academy Science Advice Structure. She is delighted to be selected as a Fellow of the first cohort of the EUTOPIA Young Leaders Academy.
Dr. Jeroen Van SchependomVrije Universiteit Brussel
Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Medicine
Jeroen Van Schependom graduated summa cum laude as a Master of Science in Engineering Physics (UGent) in 2011 and defended his PhD thesis on cognitive impairment in multiple sclerosis in 2015 at the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmaceutical Sciences (VUB) and the Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l’Education (UMons). Between 2015 and 2019 he was an FWO postdoctoral fellow in charge of collecting and processing magnetoencephalographic and diffusion-weighted imaging data from multiple sclerosis patients and was a visiting researcher at the Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity and the Computational Neuroscience Group at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. In 2016, Prof Van Schependom was promoted to part-time professor at VUB and since 2019 he was promoted into the role of first interdisciplinary senior research fellow at VUB. His appointment is evenly divided between the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy (www.aims.research.vub.be) and the Faculty of Engineering (ETRO, www.etrovub.be). His research focuses on furthering our understanding of how neurological diseases (mainly MS and Alzheimer’s disease) affect brain structure and functioning and on the development of neuromodulation as a potential treatment.
Dr. Suhao WangCY Cergy Paris Université
Department of Chemistry - LPPI - Laboratoire de Physicochimie des Polymères et des Interfaces
Dr. Suhao Wang has been a principal investigator at LPPI of CY Cergy Paris Université since 2020. He is currently leading the research of designing conjugated polymers for thermoelectric green energy conversion. During the past decade, his research activities have been cross-disciplinary, spanning polymer chemistry, solid-state physics, organic electronics, organic energy materials, etc. In 2019, he was selected by Synthetic Metals as an “early career research leader” and was invited to contribute a review paper on the role of short-range order in conjugated polymers. Up to date, he has gained extensive experience in conjugated polymers and published 28 papers on highly ranked peer-reviewed journals, such as PNAS, JACS, Advanced Materials, Chemistry of Materials, etc. According to Web of Science, Dr. Wang's papers have been cited >1600 times, with an H-index of 19 (average citations per item > 50).