Speakers

Christian Doeller studied psychology at the Universities of Würzburg, Berlin (Humboldt), and Bonn, as well as computer science in Bonn. In 2005, he completed his PhD in psychology about studies on the neuroscientific foundations of learning at Saarland University in Saarbrücken. From 2004 to 2010, he worked as a Research Fellow at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology/Institute of Neurology at University College London (from 2006 as Senior Research Fellow). In 2010, he was appointed Associate Professor and Principal Investigator at the Donders Institute for Brain,  cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Since 2016, he has been a Professor of Medicine (Neuroscience) at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience at NTNU in Trondheim, Norway, and has directed the Braathen-Kavli Centre there from 2017 to 2018. Since 2018, he has been the Director of the Department of Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig. In 2019, he was appointed as Professor of Psychology at Leipzig University. Since 2023 he is Honorary Professor for Cognitive Neuroscience at TU Dresden and Vice President of the Max Planck Society. With his research team, Doeller aims to answer fundamental questions in cognitive neuroscience: What are the key coding principles of the brain enabling human thinking?

Veronika Thanner is Head of the President’s Office at the Leibniz Association. She is responsible for science policy, scientific policy advice—a hallmark of the Leibniz Association—and international affairs. In this role, she supports and advances the Leibniz Institutes’ core mission of providing science-based advice to policymakers and society. Leibniz researchers are actively engaged in advising parliaments, ministries, associations, and other organizations by contributing expertise through reports, forecasts, and evaluations, thereby fostering evidence-informed public discourse and decision-making.
Veronika holds a PhD in Modern German Literature from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and studied modern German literature, history, and political science in Dresden, Toulouse, and Berlin. Before her current position, she coordinated the DAAD-funded reserach network “Literature – Knowledge – Media” at Humboldt Universität Berlin, connecting institutions such as Cornell, Harvard, Yale, and others. Throughout her career, Veronika has focused on fostering interdisciplinary partnerships and advancing science diplomacy within the national and international research landscape.

Jim Dratwa’s research addresses the interconnections between knowledge, values, and public policy. He has served in several positions of responsibility in that regard at the European Commission, as member of BEPA (the Bureau of European Policy Advisers to the President), at the EPSC (the European Political Strategy Centre) and in the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, where he is based.
He is the EC representative to the international organizations addressing the ethics and governance of science and new technologies. He heads the team tasked with Science for Policy.
He continues to bring together academic and policymaking activities, as reflective forms of engagement. His degrees are in physics, philosophy, politics and the life sciences; he obtained his PhD in STS from the Ecole des Mines de Paris, with Bruno Latour, and his PhD in philosophy from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, with Isabelle Stengers; he received the Fulbright Scholar Award, was Harvard Boas Fellow, Ramón y Cajal Scholar, and was pre- and post-doctoral Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and with the program on Science, Technology, and Society. It is under the Obama administration that he was made Global Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center, whose fellows are chosen based on their record achievements as authorities in their field.
Bringing together Science and Technology Studies and philosophy, as well as his policy work, he has published widely on the interplay between sustainability and digital and democracy. His latest book, Ethics of Transitions: What world do we want to live in together?, is a journey of rediscovery – indeed reimagination – of democracy, of each other, and of the world. His upcoming book, Project Europe (coming out in the autumn of 2025), is a co-edited volume tracing the mutual constitution of Europe and innovation.
He is an award-winning game designer and author, also noted for conveying his academic work through games, which explore the question of engagement as such, as in the case of environmental justice and social justice as well as humans’ connection with the Earth (Eternity, 2016; Anansi, 2021), in the case of critiques and reinventions of democracy (Débats Débiles (Deranged Democracy), 2018), and in the case of artificial intelligence and collective intelligence (Robby One, 2019).
He is engaged in service to the community as well as academic and international public administration activities. His involvement as facilitator and convenor also extends to the voluntary sector, in particular in inter-faith and inter-cultural dialogue, social justice and peace building, locally as well as internationally.

Robert Schlögl is a chemist with research interests in heterogeneous catalysis and materials for energy storage concepts. After his studies and PhD in Munich, he was a postdoc in Cambridge and Basel. Following his habilitation in Berlin, he became a professor at the Goethe University Frankfurt. For many years, he led the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Berlin (1994-2023), as well as being the founding and subsequently managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion in Mülheim an der Ruhr (2011-2022).  

Long before starting his tenure as President of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2023, Professor Schlögl has been active both nationally and internationally in several advisory and consultative bodies. He was Vice-President of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (until 2025) and a member of several other academies. Concurrently, he chairs the Advisory Board of the Kopernikus Projects of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, which drive research on energy transition. He has played a significant role in bringing together sciences, industry, civil society and policy makers.
 

Ye-One Rhie was a Member of the German Bundestag from 2021 to 2025, representing the constituency Aachen I. She served on the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment. Within the SPD parliamentary group, she was the spokesperson for transfer and innovation policy.
Before her term in parliament, she worked as a policy officer at the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). During that time, she gained experience in science management and science communication through external assignments at the Institute of Textile Technology (ITA) of RWTH Aachen University and the DWI – Leibniz Institute for Interactive Materials.

Armin Grunwald is a Full professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Technology at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany. He has been director of the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis at KIT (ITAS) since 1999 and Director of the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag in Berlin since 2002.
After university education in physics, mathematics, and philosophy, he received a PhD in theoretical Solid State Physics from Cologne University in 1987 and a habilitation at Marburg University in 1998 with a Venia Legendi in Philosophy.  His research fields include technology assessment, ethics of new technologies, digitalization, theory of sustainable development, sustainability research, and the epistemology of inter- and transdisciplinary research.
In his professional work, Armin Grunwald is member of several advisory commissions and committees in various fields of the technological advance, e.g. of the German Ethics Council and the National Board on Nuclear Waste disposal. He is an author and editor of multiple professional and research publications, among them “Technology Assessment in Practice and Theory” (Routledge 2019).

More about Armin Grunwald can be found here: www.itas.kit.edu/english/staff_grunwald_armin.php. 
 

Heide Weishaar is deputy head of the Evidence-based Public Health Unit (ZIG2) of the Centre for International Health Protection at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, the German national public health institute. She is a senior public health researcher with expertise in health policy and systems, global health, implementation science, and research methods. Heide is responsible for ZIG2’s work on capacity development in global health research. In this function, she leads several externally-funded capacity development projects, is responsible for the professional development in research methods of the unit’s staff as well as external partners, and is the RKI’s contact point for the Berlin Global Health PhD Programme. Heide’s academic work focuses on policy analysis, health communication, non-communicable diseases, and migration and health, and mainly applies qualitative and social network research methods. Heide has held research posts at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, UK, and at the Hertie School of Governance, Germany. She holds an MSc and a PhD degree from the University of Edinburgh, UK, and a BSc from the University of Bielefeld, Germany. Heide has won several awards and is an alumna of the Foundation of German Business and the German National Academic Foundation.

Uwe Cantner was a member of the Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation from December 2015 to July 2025. From May 2019 to July 2025 he was chair of the Commission.
He holds the chair of Economics/Microeconomics at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, where he is also Vice President for Young Researchers and Diversity Management. Furthermore, he is Professor of Economics at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark. Dr. Cantner taught as visiting professor at the Collegio Carlo Albert in Turin, Italy, as well as at various universities in France.
He was and is head of several committees such as the Joseph A. Schumpeter Society, which he headed in 2013/2014. From 2005 to 2011, he was deputy head of the Governing Boards of the DIME EU Network of Excellence (Dynamics of Institutions and Markets in Europe). He was chairman of the scientific advisory board of the Halle Institute of Economic Research (IWH) from 2012 to 2016.
Dr. Cantner is member of the scientific commission of the Mannheim Innovation Panel at the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), Director of the Jena Graduate School “Human Behaviour in Social and Economic Change”, member of the Board of Directors of the “Schumpeter Centre for the Study of Social and Economic Change” and member of the scientific commission of the Einstein Foundation Berlin.
Dr. Cantner is editor of the Journal of Evolutionary Economics and co-editor of numerous other publications. To date, he has published six books and more than hundred scientific essays in international journals.
He studied at the universities of Augsburg and Detroit, earned his doctorate at the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich and qualified as a professor at the University of Augsburg.
His research focuses on innovation economics in the fields of entrepreneurship and start-ups, clusters, networks and transfers, industrial dynamics, radical and transformative change, science and higher education, indicators, and research and innovation policy.

Katharina Sielemann is a consultant for research synthesis and communication at SynCom in the Helmholtz Research Field Earth and Environment. She is responsible for the coordination of projects at the science-society and science-policy interfaces and organizes synthesis workshops, parliamentary events, stakeholder dialogues, and writing retreats. In 2025, together with Tome Sandevski (Workshop Lead, Goethe Universität Frankfurt) and Paulina Conrad (Deutsche Allianz Meeresforschung), she conceptualized two workshops for researchers on "How to communicate in the political space?". Further, she co-organized delegation trips to the European Parliament in Brussels and recently co-authored an article on collaborative approaches to science-policy dialogues (Heidenreich et al., 2025).
Picture: © Helmholtz/SynCom

Tim Flink currently serves as Manager for Research and Development Policy at the Verband Forschender Arzneimittelhersteller e.V. (VFA), Germany’s Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies.
Prior to this, he was a scientific advisor to Member of Parliament Ruppert Stüwe in the German Bundestag, supporting the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment and the Subcommittee on Global Health on the topics of European and international research policy, research security, health research, data infrastructures for R&D, budgetary policies and health collaboration with the Global South. Earlier in his career, Tim held academic and research leadership roles at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), and the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, among others. Renowned for his expertise at the intersection of science policy, innovation, and international relations, Tim Flink pioneered the first internationally comparative study on science diplomacy—a publication that remains the highest cited in its field to date. In addition to shaping discourse and policy around science diplomacy, Tim has also published the first social history and policy analysis of the European Research Council and led major EU projects such as S4D4C, focused on science for and in diplomacy. His achievements and policy advice have reached the European Commission, the European Research Council, and leading German and international research bodies. Prior to his academic career, he served as advisor to the board of directors at the EU Liaision Office of the German Research Organisations in Brussels.

Linus Mattauch holds the Robert Bosch Junior Professorship on Sustainable Use of Natural Resources in the Faculty of Economics and Management at the Technical University of Berlin. He also co-leads the Research Lab “Societal Transition and Well-being” at the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research. Linus is also an Associate of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, University of Oxford and recipient of the European Award for Researchers in Environmental Economics under the Age of Forty
Linus Mattauch is an economist with expertise on climate policy, economics of sustainability, wealth inequality and welfare theory. His research agenda covers a range of topics at the intersection of inequality, climate policy and sustainable development.

Lou Bohlen is the office manager of the Minerva Stiftung and the international relations officer for the Israel and Middle East unit at the Max Planck Society headquarters. As office manager of Minerva, she shapes the research policy orientation and conceptual development of its three major funding programmes with Israel: the Minerva Weizmann Programme, the Minerva Fellowship Programme and the Minerva Centers` Programme. In her role as international relations officer, she advises the MPG leadership on scientific developments, structures, potential and risks in Israel and Middle East. She also facilitates and supports cooperation between the Max Planck Institutes and their scientific partners in the region. In recognition of her extraordinary commitment and outstanding crisis management following the Hamas attack on Israel, she was awarded the Max Planck Communitas Award in 2024.
Lou holds a PhD in Contemporary History from Ruhr University Bochum, having previously studied Contemporary History, Eastern European History and Russian Literature at Freiburg University, Bochum University and Tel Aviv University. Prior to her current position, she coordinated the Centre for Eastern European Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, which collaborated with leading Eastern European universities. Throughout her career, she has been interested in the connection between science policy, history, and science diplomacy.

At the Institute for Global Negotiation, Jérôme Bellion-Jourdan, a career diplomat, is currently leading the “Global Negotiation Support” initiative to provide negotiation advice to Chairs/Facilitators/negotiation bodies of United Nations and other multilateral processes such as the International Negotiation Committee on Plastic Pollution or the International Negotiation Body on a Pandemic Agreement. Prior to this, he notably served the European Union institutions for almost 15 years, as an EU diplomat to the United Nations in Geneva, after postings in Jerusalem and Cairo for the European Commission.

For more than 20 years, Jérôme Bellion-Jourdan has engaged on a range of global issues. In 2025, he was appointed Vice-Chair of the AI for Good Impact Initiative Steering Committee – with the International Telecommunication Union as Secretariat. As Deputy Secretary-General of the International Organization of Employers, he represented global business at the UN in New York e.g. addressed the UN ECOSOC High Level Segment on “Overcoming “short-termism” to secure a better future”, at the OECD, at the B-20/G20, and collaborated with 150 Business and Employer Organizations.

For the European Union, he led negotiations on sensitive issues such as Business and Human Rights and played an instrumental role in multi-stakeholder initiatives: in the Steering Committee of the Mega-Sporting Events Platform bringing together the UN, sporting bodies, sponsors, trade-unions and civil society; in the Group of Friends of the co-Chairs (Switzerland, ICRC) of the Montreux Document Forum on the Governance of Private Military and Security Companies.

Over the past years, Jérôme Bellion-Jourdan has been regularly called to deliver lectures, courses and trainings for various global audiences: government officials, business and students. At the Geneva Graduate Institute, he served as Director of the Executive Education’s International Negotiation and Policy-Making Program. For Grenoble Ecole de Management, he delivered courses on international negotiations. The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) called on him to lead negotiation trainings and to design its first workshop on Business and Human Rights: Key to Achieving the SDGs. The Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, after a series of joint workshops for climate, digital and trade negotiators, mandated him to co-author a handbook: Ligne du temps de la négociation.

Jérôme Bellion-Jourdan holds a Ph.D in Political Science from Sciences Po Paris and sits on the Board of Directors of Sciences Po Grenoble. He authored The Charitable Crescent. Politics of Aid in the Muslim World (IB Tauris: London - 2009) jointly with Jonathan Benthall and, on his own, several other publications in academic journals and mainstream media. Among others, he published opinions, notably for SwissInfo: The United Nations Pact for the Future: From Negotiation to Action?  
 

Andrea Bandelli is an international consultant and advisor in the field of science communication and public engagement with science. In his career spanning 25 years he has worked for several public and private organisations, including science museums, government organisations and universities across Europe, USA, South Africa and Brazil, leading some of the most innovative projects on science, art, democracy and public participation. His work often bridges science, art and policy, creating platforms where cultural expression and scientific knowledge inform decision-making and global conversations on sustainability. He is a member of the board of the Deutsches Museum in Munich, of the scientific board of Universcience in Paris, and of the Expert Network of the World Economic Forum. He has published two books and several academic and popular articles on public engagement with science and technology. 

Tim Gabel is an experienced reporter in the areas of research policy, innovation strategies and science management. He´s an editor for the science policy briefing Research.Table by Table.Briefings. Tim has worked as a science journalist for various daily newspapers and has been responsible for communications assignments for federal ministries - especially the Federal Ministry of Research.

Mirko Bischofberger is an expert in science communication with more than 20 years of experience. He's a lecturer at EPFL, ETH Zurich, University of Basel and University of Zurich. Mirko studied molecular biology and specialised in computational biology during his PhD. After working for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the Swiss Parliament, he joined the SNSF and EPFL. He has won numerous communication grants and awards and works for several funding agencies such as the ERC, the SNSF and the FWF.