SAPEA
Science Advice for Policy by European Academies
The SAPEA project is part of the European Scientific Advice Mechanism and
has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation progamme under grant agreement N° 737432.
Registration is open for SAPEA’s international symposium on science advice in Helsinki.
Places are limited.
The development of SAPEA
- 17.03.2016, Presidents of the European Academy Networks meet EU Commissioner Carlos Moedas and the High Level Group of Scientific Advisors
- 29.01.2016, First meeting of the newly-formed High Level Group of Scientific Advisors
- October 2015, the European Commission launched a Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAM) Call specifically addressed to the five above mentioned organisations.
- 26.03.2015, in presence of the Director-General of DG Research and Innovation, Robert-Jan Smits, Presidents of five European academy organisations (AE, ALLEA, EASAC, Euro-CASE and FEAM) met in Berlin to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen inter-academy cooperation in Europe.
- 27.10.2016: SAPEA project submitted to the European Commission
- 22.11.2016: Approval of the Grant Application for the SAPEA project by the European Commission.
Objective
The objective of the SAM is to ensure that the Commission has access to the best possible scientific advice, independent of institutional or political interests. It will bring together evidence and insight from different disciplines and approaches, take into consideration the specificities of EU policy making, and ensure transparency. It will complement the in-house scientific services of the Joint Research Centre and existing specialist committees.
A grant of €6 million over 4 years for European networks of academies and learned societies is included in the 2016 work programme within Horizon 2020. The grant will support academies to collaborate across Europe in providing science advice for policy.
The European Academy Networks
Academia Europaea
Academia Europaea is a European-wide Academy with individual membership (3500 members) from Council of Europe states and other nations across the world, encompassing the full range of scientific disciplines from the natural sciences, life sciences, social sciences, to arts and humanities.
ALLEA
ALLEA is the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, representing more than 50 academies from over 40 countries in Europe. Since its foundation in 1994, ALLEA represents its Member Academies on the European stage and seeks to promote science as a global public good.
Our activities aim at shaping the conditions for science and research, providing the best science advice available for citizens and policymakers, and strengthening the role of science in society. In the spirit of true collaboration and cooperation, ALLEA offers a platform for European academies to work together on topics of mutual interest and for the betterment of the inhabitants of Europe. Solving challenges in an ever more complex world requires comprehensive interdisciplinary and international cooperation from beginning to end.
EASAC
The European Academies’ Science Advisory Council is the network of the 27 National Science Academies of the EU Member States, Norway and Switzerland. EASAC provides science advice for European policy makers, primarily in the areas of environment, energy and biosciences.
Euro-CASE
The European Council of Academies of Applied Sciences, Technologies and Engineering gathers 23 European Academies with a special focus on Innovation, energy and bioeconomy policy and has unique access to additional expertise from the business sector.
FEAM
The Federation of European Academies of Medicine brings together 18 National Academies of Medicine and medical sections of National Academies of Sciences.
The tasks
- To provide the Commission with independent scientific advice on specific policy issues where such advice is critical to the development of EU policies or legislation and does not duplicate advice being provided by existing bodies. The advice provided by the group shall identify the most important and relevant evidence and empirical findings that can support decision making on the specified policy issues, including an assessment of the robustness and limitations of the evidence and empirical findings.
- To support the Commission in identifying specific policy issues where independent scientific advice is needed.
- To provide recommendations for improving the overall interaction between Commission policy making processes and independent scientific advice concerning any field of Union policy making.
Janusz Bujnicki
Professor, Head of the Laboratory of Bioinformatics and Protein Engineering, International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Warsaw
Professor of Biology, and head of a research group at IIMCB in Warsaw and at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland. Janusz Bujnicki graduated from the Faculty of Biology, University of Warsaw in 1998, defended his PhD in 2001, was awarded with habilitation in 2005 and with the professor title in 2009.
Bujnicki’s research combines bioinformatics, structural biology and synthetic biology. His scientific achievements include the development of methods for computational modeling of protein and RNA 3D structures, discovery and characterization of enzymes involved in RNA metabolism, and engineering of proteins with new functions.
Pearl Dykstrai
Deputy Chair
Professor of Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdama
Professor Dykstra has a chair in Empirical Sociology and is Director of Research of the Department of Public Administration and Sociology at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Previously, she had a chair in Kinship Demography at Utrecht University (2002-2009) and was a senior scientist at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) in The Hague (1990-2009).
Her publications focus on intergenerational solidarity, aging societies, family change, aging and the life course, and late-life well-being.
Elvira Fortunatoi
Professor, Materials Science Department of the Faculty of Science and Technology, NOVA University, Lisbon
Professor Fortunato is a full professor in the Materials Science Department of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the New University of Lisbon, a Fellow of the Portuguese Engineering Academy since 2009 and decorated as a Grand Officer of the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator by the President of the Republic in 2010, due to her scientific achievements worldwide. In 2015 she was appointed by the Portuguese President Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the Celebrations of the National Day of Portugal, Camões and the Portuguese Communities.
Nicole Grobert
Professor of Nanomaterials at the Department of Materials in the University of Oxford
Nicole Grobert’s research group focuses on the synthesis, processing, and characterisation of novel carbon and non-carbon based nanomaterials, including nanoparticles, nanotubes, nanorods, graphene and other 2D nanomaterials. Moreover, multifunctional hierarchical nanostructures are also developed and investigated for their implementation in the health-care sectors and for their use in energy applications.
Professor Grobert is a Royal Society Industry Fellow at Williams Advanced Engineering, a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford and a visiting professor at the Bio-Nano Electronics Research Centre at Toyo University, Japan.
Rolf-Dieter Heuer
Chair
Former Director-General of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)a
Professor Heuer is an experimental particle physicist and has been CERN Director-General since January 2009. His mandate, ending December 2015, is characterised by the start of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) 2009 as well as its energy increase 2015, the discovery of the H-Boson and the geographical enlargement of CERN Membership. He also actively engaged CERN in promoting the importance of science and STEM education for the sustainable development of the society.
Carina Keskitalo
Professor, Department of Geography and Economic Historya
E. Carina H. KESKITALO is Professor of Political Science at the Department of Geography and Economic History at Umeå University, and is also strategic research leader at the Department of Forest Resource Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden. She has published extensively on natural resource use policy in particular forest policy, climate change adaptation in a comparative European context, and regional development in the eight-state circumpolar Arctic region.
Paul Nurse
Director of the Francis Crick Institute
Paul Nurse is a geneticist and cell biologist who has worked on how the eukaryotic cell cycle is controlled and how cell shape and cell dimensions are determined.
His major work has been on the cyclin dependent protein kinases and how they regulate cell reproduction.
He is Director of the Francis Crick Institute in London, and has served as President of the Royal Society, Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK and President of Rockefeller University.
He shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and has received the Albert Lasker Award and the Royal Society’s Royal and Copley Medals.