Brussels: First meeting of the Nomination Committee of the Scientific Panel for Health (SPH) of the EU’s Horizon 2020 Programme

Peter Heinrich, Chairman of the Board of BIO Deutschland, was appointed to the nomination committee of the Scientific Panel for Health (SPH) of Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, in June. The committee met in Brussels on 24 July to discuss the some 60 candidates proposed by the various EU member states and to agree on a long list. The SPH will comprise 15 to 20 members and be responsible for the following tasks:

“1. Analyse bottlenecks preventing the achievement of better health and wellbeing for all, whether scientific, legislative, ethical, cultural, regulatory or other, and propose solutions related to science, research and innovation to address these bottlenecks in the medium and longer term;

2. Identify long-term trends influencing health and wellbeing through foresight and recommend research and innovation priorities to respond to them.

3. Propose strategies to promote the effective exploitation of knowledge generated at national and EU levels by research and innovation programmes through the translation and implementation of results into practice.”

Three Germans were among the 60 candidates. During the meeting on 24 July, the committee drew up a long list of around 30 candidates. This list will be reduced to about 20 candidates at the committee’s next meeting. The members of the SPH should be scientifically minded and have a wide range of skills and experience. The aim is to have a balanced mixture of ages, genders and countries of origin. The nomination committee has suggested candidates (scientists/clinicians) from academia, the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, and science policymaking.

The nomination committee comprises the following members:

Karin Sipido (Belgium) Chair, President, Alliance for Biomedical Research in Europe
John Savill (UK), Chief Executive Medical Research Council
André Syrota (France), President-Director INSERM
Liselotte Højgaard (Denmark), Chair of European Medical Research Councils and Chair of Horizon 2020 societal challenge 1 advisory group
Peter Heinrich (Germany), Chairman of the Board of BIO Deutschland
Elias Zerhouni (US), President, Global R&D, Sanofi
Ildikó Horváth (Hungary), Director, Directorate for Health Policy, Ministry of Human Resources, Hungary
Bengt Jönsson (Sweden), Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden
Daniel Aletaha (Austria), Clinical and translational medicine, Medical University of Vienna