SPEAKERS

ATTRACT FINAL CONFERENCE

Belgium - Garden

Speakers

ATTRACT Committees

Sergio Bertolucci

Chair of the ATTRACT R&D&I Committee

Sergio Bertolucci is an adjunct professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy “Augusto Righi” DIFA of the University of Bologna, and co-spokesperson of the DUNE Experiment.  

He is a particle physicist, former Pisa scholar and former director of research and scientific computing at CERN.  

Before joining CERN, he worked at DESY, Fermilab and Frascati. He is the co-author of over 370 papers. During his career, he has played an instrumental role in the KLOE and CDF experiments, which led to the discovery of the top quark, and innovative instrumentation, development and leadership of the DAFNE accelerator.  

He was also vice president and a member of the Board of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics.  

Michael Krisch

Chair of the ATTRACT Project Consortium Board

Michael Krisch joined the ESRF in 1988 as a trainee and then as a PhD student in the Optics Group, affiliated with the University of Dortmund. After a year spent abroad at the NSLS, Brookhaven National Laboratory, he returned to the ESRF to participate in the construction and commissioning of beamline ID16 (Inelastic scattering I). In 1996, he became the scientist in charge of the ID28 beamline project (Inelastic scattering II), and in 2013, he took over the responsibility of the Upgrade beamline ID20 (UPBL6). He served as Deputy Group Head of the High Resolution and Resonance Scattering Group from 2002 to 2009, and as Group Head of the Dynamics and Extreme Conditions Group from 2009 to 2015.

Krisch is a solid-state physicist with a particular interest in the investigation of the magnetic and electronic structure and dynamics of materials, studies at extremes of pressure and temperature, and X-ray instrumentation. He was Head of the ESRF Instrument Support and Development Division (ISDD) during the period 2015-2019. He was then appointed scientist in charge of the biomedical beamline ID17 at the ESRF from 2019 to 2022. He has been working in the Director General’s Office, following up on EU and international science and innovation programmes.

Plenary Panels

Jean-David Malo

Acting Director, DG RTD, European Commission

René Repasi

Member and Shadow Rapporteur, European Parliament

René Repasi has served as a member of the European Parliament since February 2022, representing the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) group, and is also a professor of law at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Within the Parliament, he is a full member of the committees on economic and monetary affairs (ECON) and legal affairs (JURI) and a substitute member of the committee on industry, research and energy (ITRE) responsible for research policy. Moreover, he is the chair of the German social democratic group and acts as vice-chair of the EU-China delegation. He is currently involved as a shadow rapporteur in Parliament’s report on the assessment of the implementation of Horizon Europe. Prior to his mandate, he was a full-time professor of law at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He also acted as evaluator of the European Research Council (ERC).

His research focused on the law of the economic and monetary union, financial market regulation, competition law, and constitutional questions of EU law. Repasi holds a Ph.D. degree in law from Heidelberg University.   

Sinéad Ryan

Dean of Research, Trinity College Dublin

Sinéad Ryan FTCD is a professor of theoretical high-energy physics. She has served as the head of the School of Mathematics from 2012-2016 and 2019-2022. She has held honorary and visiting positions in Europe and the US and is a life member of Clare Hall Cambridge. She is currently dean and vice president of research at Trinity College Dublin.  

Prof. Ryan has national and international experience as a researcher and in the development of research policy. She has served as chair of the PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) Scientific Steering Committee (2017/18). 

She is a member of the Irish Research Council, a member of the scientific advisory Board at the Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics and chair of the EuroHPC infrastructure advisory Group with responsibility for developing the strategic agenda for classical and quantum computing resources in Europe.  

How can Europe retain and attract young talent?

Lucienne de Waal

Student, ATTRACT Academy (TeSI program)

Lucienne de Waal is an industrial designer based in Barcelona and Amsterdam, with a strong focus on social and environmentally conscious design. A graduate of IED Barcelona, her work blends sustainability with user-centred innovation. She has been actively involved in the ATTRACT project at CERN’s IdeaSquare, participating in the i2Planet and TeSI courses.

In i2Planet, Lucienne collaborated with multidisciplinary teams to address global challenges such as water scarcity, while TeSI focused on integrating advanced hyperspectral imaging technology into drones to optimise agricultural water use. At Amsterdam University Medical Centre, she designed practical healthcare solutions, including an add-on for ECG devices to improve their efficiency during emergencies. As an industrial designer at Float IoT, Lucienne works on sustainable redesigns of “Internet of Things” (IoT) enclosures for smart water management systems.

Aaro Packalén

Student, ATTRACT Academy (BASE program)

Aaro Packalén is the course coordinator for the product development project (PDP) at the Aalto University Design Factory (ADF). With a background in electrical engineering and product development, he is currently completing his master’s thesis on ideation practices in the health technology industry. He is passionate about exponential thinking, advancing project management, and fostering interactions within diverse, interdisciplinary teams.

As an ATTRACT student project alumnus, Aaro spent nine months working on a project with H3D-VISIOnAIR, where he led a student team in developing a crucial component for the consortium’s AR solution for surgeons. With three years of experience at ADF, he progressed from assisting students in the print shop to coordinating a global innovation course with 180 students and 11 partner universities.

Massimo Caccia

Full Professor, Università degli Studi dell’Insubria

Eszter Lakos

Member, European Parliament

Eszter Lakos is a newly elected Hungarian member of the European Parliament, representing the European People’s Party.

Prior to becoming MEP, she served as a science and technology (S&T) attaché based in Brussels, representing Hungary in the Council of the EU, and in particular playing a key role in the negotiations for Horizon Europe. She also set up and led the Hungarian research & development and innovation liaison office in Brussels and represented it in the informal group of RTD liaison offices (IGLO) from 2012 to 2015. Lakos has a background working in international trade and finance, which she did in Italy and Belgium between 2007 and 2011.

She holds a Ph.D. degree in international law and economics from Bocconi University in Milan, as well as a master’s degree in international and European law from the University of Bologna.  

Alina Ujupan

Head of Cabinet, Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Roxana Minzatu, European Commission

How to overcome the Valley of Death for Deep Tech?

Albert Bravo-Biosca

Director, Innovation Growth Lab (NEXT project) 

Clio Dosi

Assistant Professor, University of Bologna (ABC4E project)

Jonathan Wareham

Professor, Esade (Compute Impact  project)

Francis de Vericourt

Chaired Professor & Academic Director, Institute for Deep Tech Innovation, ESMT Berlin

Enrique García Vidorreta

Head of Fusion Technologies & Engineering Department, Fusion for Energy

David Osimo

Director of Research, The Lisbon Council

David Osimo is director of Research in The Lisbon Council, a Brussels-based think tank set up in 2003 to intellectually accompany the Lisbon Agenda, Europe’s original growth and jobs programme. He coordinates the research activity on issues such as data economy, digital government, start-ups, and scale-up policy, as well as pioneering novel collaborative methods for policy research.

He previously served as director and co-founder of two start-ups, as a scientific officer in the European Commission Joint Research Centre and advised the United Nations and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. He holds degrees from the University of Milan and the University of Cardiff.

REGISTER NOW!

02 & 03 JULY 2025 – SPARKS (BRUSSELS)

Updates from the ATTRACT funded projects

VIEW ALL NEWS
blob

TURNING
THE PROOFS-OF-CONCEPT INTO APPLICATIONS