Category: Current member

Affiliation: Independent scholar (Luxembourg) with Academic Visitor status in the Classics Faculty of the University of Oxford

Keywords: Latin literature, Classical rhetoric, ancient and modern oratory, Cicero, Maurice Garçon

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Full profile: Thierry holds master’s degrees in Latin literature and Musicology (University of Tübingen), in Latin language and literature (University of Oxford), and in Criminal law (University of Toulouse Capitole). He received his PhD in Classics from Oxford with a thesis on Cicero’s first work on rhetorical theory.

The grandson of a two-time internal refugee from WWII, he decided to continue with his research as an independent scholar while being professionally active outside of academia, first by getting involved in the management of the ‘refugee crisis’ that started in Europe during his PhD. After a year spent as a volunteer with a UN program, he was appointed head of the refugee program within the Employment Agency of Luxembourg, his home country, in 2017. Sensing that his vocation lay in defending people, he left the civil service in 2020 to study law in order to become an avocat (barrister).

Since 2018 he has been an Associate Researcher, then Academic Visitor in the Oxford Classics Faculty, and in 2022-2025 served on the Executive Council of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (ISHR), of which he has been a two-time Research Fellow. In 2024 he was elected to serve on Luxembourg’s Consultative Human Rights Commission, which advises the government and parliament of Luxembourg on human rights issues. Since 2016 he has been one of the organists of the renowned Stahlhuth-Jann organ of St Martin’s, Dudelange.

He is the author of two volumes of works by Claude Debussy and W.A. Mozart arranged for the organ (Carus Verlag). His scholarly book publications so far include a German bilingual edition of Rhetorica ad Herennium (Reclam Verlag) as well as two textbooks combining Classical rhetorical theory with modern law court speeches, Introduction à l’art de la plaidoirie. L’exemple luxembourgeois (Larcier-Promoculture) and L’art de la plaidoirie. Théorie et pratique (Larcier-Bruylant), which includes a selection of 30 law court speeches by leading avocats from Belgium, France, and Luxembourg. Thierry currently works on a major commentary on Book 1 of Cicero’s De Inventione (OUP) in parallel with a bilingual English edition of Cicero’s De Inventione, De Optimo Genere Oratorum, and Topica (HUP, Loeb Classical Library), as well as on a commentary on Cicero’s Actio Prima in C. Verrem (CUP) and a reedition cum introduction of Maurice Garçon’s treatise on rhetoric and two major law court speeches (Les Belles Lettres).

Affiliation:  Gulbenkian Institute of Molecular Medicine, Portugal

Keywords: Gut-Brain axis ; Neuroimmunology ; Microbiota ; peptidoglycan; Pattern Recognition Receptors (PRRs); Sex hormones

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Full profile: I started my research training in 2004, at the University of Sao Paulo (USP) in Brazil. The main goal of my undergraduate, and Master’s projects was to uncover novel therapeutical approaches for Diabetes Mellitus. This research was supported by Brazilian government fellowships. During my Master’s, I obtained a scholarship from the École normale supérieure de Cachan (France) to spend six months there, in a research training program expanding my knowledge of molecular biology and viral vectors. In 2011, I joined a neuroimmunomodulation group and started my Ph.D. at USP. In the 2nd year of my Ph.D., I obtained an international fellowship to continue my research training at the Rockefeller University in New York, studying neuroimmune interactions in the gut. The work I accomplished during my thesis, uncovered a neuro-immune axis that induces a tissue-protective program in gut macrophages in response to a potentially pathogenic insult (Gabanyi et al. Cell 2016).

During this time, I acquired a solid understanding of gut immunology and the enteric-associated nervous system and became increasingly interested in studying the poorly characterized mechanisms of neuronal responses to bacterial stimuli. Thus, I joined the Institut Pasteur (France) for my postdoctoral work, where I have gained a solid foundation in neuroscience, particularly in the study of the central nervous system. The work I carried during this period describes cell-autonomous effects in brain neurons in response to bacterial compounds regularly released by the intestinal microbiota at homeostasis, uncovering a new sex- and age-dependent microbiota-brain axis involved in metabolism control (Gabanyi et al. Science 2022). Although many studies have highlighted the importance of the gut-brain axis, we are still far from understanding the mechanisms by which the gut microbiota modulates brain circuits. To continue to dissect the mechanisms and external factors involved in the microbiota-gut-brain axis interactions I joined the Gulbenkian Institute of Science (now Gulbenkian Institute of Molecular Medicine) in Portugal to establish my research team in 2022.

Affiliation: University of Granada

Keywords: Printed electronics; sensors; sustainable electronics; energy harvesting; RFID technology

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Full profile: Dr. Almudena Rivadeneyra completed 5 different master’s degrees in telecommunication engineering, environmental sciences, electronics engineering, industrial management and marketing studies. In 2014 she obtained the Ph.D. degree in design and development of environmental sensors from the University of Granada and moved to the Institute for Nanoelectronics at the Technical University of Munich (Germany). In 2018 she obtained a Marie Curie fellowship, moving back to Granada, and currently is Ramón y Cajal Fellow at the University of Granada.
Almudena was awarded the Young Researcher Award in 2019 by the Consejo Social UGR and has been listed among the 2% most influential researchers by the Stanford University. She was nominated for the Early Career Distinguished Presenters recognition at the Material Research Society Fall Meeting 2024. She has been principal investigator of 10 research projects, including a preclinical study. She has been invited to give several talks and webinars at different institutions (University of Malaga, TUM, DAAD, COIT-AORM) and conferences (2024 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit, Multimat 2018, Symposium “Selected Topics in Science and Technology”). Almudena belongs to several technical committees, including IEEE RFID Technical Committee on Additively Manufactured Electronics Systems and IEEE IES Technical Committee on MEMS and Nanotechnology (TC-MICRO). Also, she is member of various executive committees of conferences, such as “International Conference on Nanotechnology & Materials Science 2023”, “The Electron Devices Technology and Manufacturing Conference” (EDTM 2022 and 2023). In addition, Almudena has organized 2 workshops and 4 special sessions at international conferences. She was co-chair of the IEEE International Flexible Electronics Technology Conference (IFETC) 2024 awards.
Almudena actively participates in dissemination and communication activities giving talks and workshops at different events, such as the European Research Night; Science week; Engineering Fair; Women and Girls in Science Day.

Affiliation: University of Cologne

Keywords: • Aerogels, Bio-inspired materials, Hybrid nanomaterials, Biopolymer-based hydrogels and aerogels, Bone tissue engineering, Cancer therapy, Theragenerative materials.

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Full profile: PD. Dr. Hajar Maleki is a research group leader at the Institute of Inorganic and Materials Chemistry, University of Cologne (UoC), Cologne, Germany, and an associated research group leader at the Center for Molecular Medicine Cologne (CMMC). Her research focuses on the development of bio-inspired porous materials, particularly aerogels for biomedical, environmental, and energy-related applications.

She began her scientific career as a recipient of the prestigious Marie Curie Ph.D. Fellowship at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, where she developed hybrid aerogels for aerospace insulation. She continued as a Lise Meitner Fellow in Austria, where she pioneered the development of silk fibroin-based aerogels (AeroSF)—ultralight, flexible biopolymer-based materials suitable for biomedical applications.

Since starting her habilitation in Germany in 2019, Dr. Maleki has established an independent research line on biomimetic aerogels as artificial extracellular matrices for bone tissue regeneration. Her group has developed smart, multifunctional aerogel scaffolds with improved mechanical properties, osteogenic potential, and therapeutic functionalities such as antibacterial and anticancer effects. These innovations integrate surface chemistry engineering, 3D processing (including freeze-casting and printing), and hybrid nanomaterials.

In addition to biomedical materials, her team also develops:

• Wearable soft electronics such as piezoresistive sensors
• Thermal insulating aerogels for energy applications
• Functional aerogel sorbents for environmental remediation
• Hybrid photocatalysts for solar hydrogen generation

She leads a dynamic interdisciplinary group and has mentored over 30 students and early-career researchers, including Ph.D. candidates and postdocs. Her contributions to the field have been recognized through several competitive honors and fellowships, including:

• Marie Curie Ph.D. Fellowship
• FWF Lise Meitner Postdoctoral Fellowship
• German Research Foundation (DFG) Research Grants
• ACS Materials Au Rising Star in Materials Science (2023)
• Top 2% Most Influential Scientists Worldwide in Nanoscience & Materials Chemistry (2022–2024, Stanford University/Elsevier)
• Career Advancement Group Awardee of Center of Molecular Medicine Cologne (2024)

She has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles and delivered 30+ invited/keynote talks, and serves on editorial boards of Scientific Reports, Smart Materials and Methods, and Frontiers in Biomaterials Science. She is also a Fellow of the Young Academy of Europe (FYAE) and acting as a Key Opinion Leader at Fibrothelium GmbH.

Affiliation:  University of Bucharest

Keywords: Early modern philosophy, aesthetics, Holocaust studies, biopolitics, philosophy of culture

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Full profile: Oana Serban teaches Modern Philosophy, Aesthetics, Biopolitics and Cultural Studies at the University of Bucharest, Romania, as titular professor of the Faculty of Philosophy and the UNESCO Chair in Interculturality, Good Governance and Sustainable Development. She is the Executive Director of CCIIF – The Research Center for the History of Philosophical Ideas (UB). She has authored Cultural capital and creative communication. (Anti)Modern and (Non)Eurocentric Perspectives (Routledge, 2023), After Thomas Kuhn. The Structure of Aesthetic Revolutions (De Gruyter, 2022), Artistic Capitalism (Paralela 45, 2016; Cartea Românească Educațional 2025), and co-edited different volumes of philosophy, culture and aesthetics, from which the most recent are Rethinking Modernity, Transitions and Challenges (Cambridge, Ethics International Press), Bordering the European Identity (Bucharest University Press 2018), Octavio Paz: Culture and Modernity (Bucharest University Press, 2017), Culture and Religion in the Balkans. Philosophical Approaches (Bucharest University Press, 2015).

Currently, she is interested in the biopolitical potential of modern art, explored in one of her latest studies, published in the volume Philosophy and Film: Bridging Divides (ed. Christina Rawls, Diana Neiva, Steven Gouveia) (Routledge, 2019), and continued in her capacity as director of a research project on Biopolitical Art in the Post-Holocaust Time. Forthcoming volumes at Edinburgh University Press and Suny Press include her latest studies on biopolitical art and Italian biopolitics. She teaches Holocaust studies framed as a biopolitical history of antisemitism and antihumanism. In this field, she is interested in topics such as the impardonable and limits of forgiveness, the origins of totalitarianism, hospitality and hostility in the 20^th century, the aestheticization of violence, cultural memory and remembrance. Oana Șerban has translated different authors such as Gilles Lipovetsky, Michel Foucault, Sylvain Tesson and Jean d’Ormesson.

Affiliation: Leiden University, The Netherlands

Keywords: Greek history, religion, material culture and epigraphy; Athenian democracy; ancient environmental and urban history; historical anthropology

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Full profile: In 2006, while studying at a vocational high school with a focus on economics, Rafał Matuszewski won first prize in the 32nd Polish History Olympiad; he then obtained a professional qualification in economics, and began his academic journey in the field of Humanities. Trained as a historian, classical philologist and archaeologist in Poland, Germany and France, he received his PhD in Ancient History from the University of Heidelberg in 2017. Prior to joining the faculty at Leiden University in 2023, he held a Junior Fellowship at the Walter Benjamin Kolleg of the University of Bern (Switzerland) and was assistant professor at the University of Salzburg (Austria) from 2017 until 2023.

His research has been funded by, among others, the National Science Centre, the Polish-American Freedom Foundation, the Herbert Quandt Foundation, the DAAD and the State of Baden-Württemberg, the Fondation Hardt (Switzerland), the French Government, the Austrian Research Foundation (ÖFG) and the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). In 2019, he was appointed Sterling Dow Fellow in Greek Epigraphy and History at The Ohio State University, and in 2024, he was named Stanley J. Seeger Visiting Research Fellow in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University. In 2022 he was awarded the 2022 Paul Rehak Prize in recognition of his research achievements in the field of ancient sexualities.

Rafał’s main areas of research include Greek social and cultural history, Greek and Roman religion and the history of mentalities, ancient medicine, environmental humanities, historical anthropology, Greek epigraphy and material culture. Generally, he is interested in people, as are all historians, but unlike many, he is also equally preoccupied with objects, spaces, and nature. His first book, Eros and sophrosyne (2011), focused on the ideals and reality of classical Greek homosexuality.

His second, Räume der Reputation (2019), explored spaces, norms, and conventions of everyday interactions in fourth-century Athens. Along the way, he has (co-)edited a few collective volumes, including the most recent on Being Alone in Antiquity (2021) and the forthcoming A Cultural History of Sleep and Dreaming in Antiquity (2026) and Moribund Bodies (2026). In his research work, he often tackles issues that currently affect our planet, are socially relevant and of broad public interest, such as the problem of loneliness and social isolation, adolescence and sexual maturity or the phenomenon of sleep and dreams in a historical and transcultural perspective.

Affiliation: University of St Andrews, United Kingdom

Keywords: Cooperation, Reciprocity, Evolution, Social Cognition, Animal Behaviour, Comparative Psychology

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Full profile: Dr Manon Schweinfurth, originally from Germany, studied Biology with a minor in Psychology at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. During her studies, she became fascinated by how and why animals live together peacefully. For her PhD, she moved to Bern, Switzerland, to investigate the evolution of social behaviours in rats. She was then awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation to study social cognition in chimpanzees at Chimfunshi, Zambia. Today, she is a Senior Lecturer (equivalent to Associate Professor) in the School of Psychology & Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews, United Kingdom, and leads an independent research group, the Cooperation Lab.

Manon’s research delves into the origins of sociality and cooperation, with a focus on the underlying evolutionary and psychological mechanisms. Specifically, she aims at understanding how and why seemingly altruistic behaviours emerge and persist in a competitive world. Her Cooperation Lab is an international, collaborative and interdisciplinary research group that works on a range of questions, while combining different disciplines and collecting data on humans and animals (predominantly chimpanzees and rats). Her work is and has been supported by prestigious grants and recognised by various international awards. The impact of her research is further evidenced by the numerous invitations she receives to present at scientific institutions across Europe and beyond, and garnered widespread media coverage in over 30 countries.

Beyond her academic contributions, Manon is actively involved in the scientific community. Currently, she manages an international academic society with over 500 members from more than 20 countries and co-organises a research consortium that spans over 30 sites across four continents. She is an Associate Editor for the journals Animal Behaviour and Journal of Comparative Psychology. In addition, she has organised international and national conferences, workshops and symposia, fostering collaboration and interdisciplinarity. Committed to supporting the next generation of scientists, Manon mentors early-career researchers through various programmes, providing guidance and support as they develop their careers. Her dedication to science communication is evident in her frequent public engagements, including events, podcasts, and popular science writing. She also teaches multiple courses at the bachelor’s and master’s levels with the aim to inspire the next generation by challenging their current understanding and fostering critical thinking. Recently, Manon designed and curated a temporary museum exhibition that attracted over 25,000 visitors, further demonstrating her passion for making science accessible and engaging to the broader public.

Affiliation: University of Bucharest, Romania

Keywords: Digital health, mental health, computational linguistics, cognitive clinical sciences, cancer survivorship

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Full profile: Ioana Podina is a professor of psychology at the University of Bucharest and the founder of the Laboratory of Cognitive Clinical Sciences. Her academic expertise spans clinical and cognitive psychology, with a focus on digital mental health, psychotherapy, and cancer survivorship research. Ioana’s interdisciplinary approach also incorporates human-computer interaction and computational linguistics, resulting in impactful, evidence-based research published in top-tier journals.

Actively engaged in shaping science policy, she serves on Romania’s Consultative College for Research, Development, and Innovation and recently held the position of Vice Chair of UNESCO’s expert group on the ethics of neurotechnologies. In these roles, she has demonstrated a strong commitment to the ethical governance of emerging technologies.

Ioana also serves as Chair of the Research Committee for the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI) and as a country representative for the Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR). Her projects, such as aiCARE, exemplify her ability to integrate expertise from psychology, IT, and computational linguistics to develop innovative solutions, including chatbots, to address mental health issues for cancer survivors and broader public health challenges.

A passionate advocate for evidence-based science communication, she uses social media campaigns to combat pseudoscience and engage the public, fostering greater trust in science and mental health research.

Affiliation: Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany

Keywords: Computational linguistics, language technology, human health, linguistic biomarkers, precision health, speech pathology, minority languages and communities, laboratory phonology, psycholinguistics

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Full profile: Prof. Dr. Kevin Tang is a University Professor in English Linguistics with specialisations in Phonetics/Phonology/Morphology at the Department of English Language and Linguistics, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. He holds a courtesy appointment at the University of Florida in Computational Language Science. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Linguistics from University College London, an M.Eng. and a B.A. in Engineering from the University of Cambridge and his postdoctoral training from Yale University. He’s the director of the Speech, Lexicon, And Modeling lab (SLaM lab) (https://slam.phil.hhu.de/).

His research interests lie in computational linguistics with a special interest in speech technology (phonetics and phonology) and learning mechanism of human and machine. He conducts data-intensive research on linguistic variations, human health research and language technology. His current interdisciplinary research projects include developing a smart pseudo-palate for linguistic and biomedical applications (patent pending) with a focus on evaluating parkinsonism, developing a sociolinguistic-enabled virtual health assistant for African Americans and mitigating social biases in speech technology against minoritized populations such as African American English speakers and people who stutter. He has collaborated with researchers in genetics, engineering, speech pathology, psychotherapy, health communication. His multidisciplinary work has so far been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Affiliation: Osmaniye Korkut Ata University, Turkey

Keywords: Remote sensing, earth observation, geoinformatics, cultural heritage, archaeological prospection, archaeological proxies

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Full profile: Mustafa Sevindik studied Biology at Gaziantep University. He then completed his PhD on Atmospheric Fungi at Akdeniz University. In 2018, he received his PhD on fungal spores in the atmosphere of Mardin province. In 2019, he started working as an Assistant Prof. Dr. at Osmaniye Korkut Ata University, Bahçe Vocational School, Food Technology program. He later became an Assoc. Prof. Dr. in 2020. In 2022, he started working at the Biology Department of the same university and still works there.

Dr. Sevindik has nearly 200 national and international articles. He has received many awards from different national and international organizations. He has taken part in many international projects that he has completed and are ongoing with different countries. Many of his projects have been supported by TÜBİTAK (The Science and Technology Research Council of Turkey), which operates in Turkey.

He has been on the list of the world’s most influential scientists published by Elsevier since 2021.

He has been a writer in important books in his field such as the List of Turkish Fungi and the List of Turkish Archae and Bacteria. He is an editor in many national and international journals. He has also trained many graduate and doctoral students in his field.

He is a member of many commissions in his institution and in the city he works in.