About Presenters

Alan Irwin
Professor in the Department of Organisation, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.

Alan Irwin has been an important source of inspiration for the YouCount project through his book: “Citizen Science” from 1995. This had the ambition of contributing to the democratization of the sciences through citizen science. Between 2007 and 2014, he was Dean of Research at Copenhagen Business School. In addition, he was Acting President during 2011. Previously, he was Professor of Science and Technology Policy, and Dean of Social and Environmental Studies, at the University of Liverpool. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. He has an honorary doctorate from the University of Gothenburg. Alan Irwin recently chaired the European Commission’s mutual learning exercise (MLE) on Citizen Science initiatives.

Katharina Buse
Project Advisor, European Research Executive Agency, REA.C4 - Reforming European R&I and Research Infrastructure

Katharina Buse hold a Master’s Degree in Political Science and another one in Public Administration from the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA). She has background from the private and public sector and has worked for different national administrators, EEAS and in the EC in several periods. She is currently the project officer for YouCount and other related EU Citizen Science projects within the H2020 SwafS and the Horizon Europe programmes.

Asya Salnikova
Asya Salnikova is a Science Officer at European Science Foundation (ESF) Science Connect.

Asya Salnikova is currently working on EU-funded projects Time4CS and PATTERN within the Inclusive Science cluster, dealing with Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and more specifically, with citizen engagement, inclusion, gender equality and Open Science. She holds a PhD in International Law from the University of Strasbourg and has vast experience in project management, including EU/Council of Europe Joint Programmes, and in developing and supporting European and international collaborations.

About the Time4CS project
TIME4CS aims at supporting science with and for society by facilitating a way in which the scientific ecosystem could better take societal views into consideration by supporting Research Performing Organisations - i.e. research entities such as universities and research centres - in defining and implementing institutional changes that can lead to a better and more effective engagement of citizens in research and innovation. Those institutional changes inside RPOs will entail transformation of their governance systems by taking into account both the social - mindset of people inside the organisation – and the organisational - norms, protocols, procedures, policy - aspects of RPOs. To facilitate this process, TIME4CS has identified 4 Intervention Areas that alone or combined can stimulate the institutional changes necessary to promote public engagement in R&I activities: Research; Education and Awareness; Support resources and Infrastructure; Policy and Assessment.

Gabriella Leo
Policy Officer, DG R&I, Unit A4, Open Science, EC

Gabriella Leo is policy officer at the DG Research & Innovation “Open Science and Research Infrastructures” unit of the European commission. In DG R&I she works on policy development and monitoring on open access and in developing and implementing policy for citizen and societal engagement in R&I actions under the European Research Area. Before joining the European Commission in 2021, she has been working for over 30 years as researcher at the National Research Council (CNR) of Italy dealing with scientific research and research project management in the fields of advanced materials for sensor and photonics applications to face main societal challenges. Her background is physics and material science.

Dick Kasperowski
Professor at Gothenburg University, Department of Philosophy, Linguistics, Theory of Science, Sweden.

Informed by current perspectives in science and technology studies (STS), Dick Kasperowski has studied the development of Citizen Science over several years. His main interests encompass governance of science, scientific citizenship and the management of uncertainty in public scientific controversies. The analytical focus of his research concerns how political and scientific representations are related to each other and how (scientific) citizenship is connected to research policy and scientific practices. Current research focuses the increasing trend in environmental activism to use legal institutions and infrastructures for citizen science to affect policy and regulation.

Alessia Smaniotto
Head of the International Department for OpenEdition Center (EHESS), Citizen science officer for OPERAS, and Scientific Coordinator of the EU-funded project COESO.

Alessia Smaniotto is trained in philosophy, journalism, and sociology. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). She develops citizen science projects and services for the OPERAS community, while working at OpenEdition Center, a French infrastructure devoted to Open Science and scholarly communication in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Before joining the academia, Alessia worked as a journalist in public and private media in Italy.

About the COESO project
COESO aims at fostering the growth of participatory research in the social sciences. It facilitates and supports participatory research by funding and accompanying 10 citizen science pilot projects. Each pilot presents a distinct model of interaction between different kinds of stakeholders, addressing specific societal issues. The joint work with the pilots and the observation of their dynamics of co-operation, enabled the development of a dedicated online project management, VERA, that is also co-designed with them.

Mina Stareva
Deputy Head of Unit, RTD.D3, Fair Societies & Cultural Heritage, EC

Mina Starevais holds a bachelor’s degree in Law from Robert Schuman – Strasbourg University and a Master of Arts degree in Political Sciences from the College of Europe. Prior to her current position, she has taken part in the Science with and for society unit, and also worked on developing the European Research Area policy and international cooperation.

Josep Perelló
OpenSystems-UB research leader and CoAct project coordinator at the University of Barcelona and UBICS.

Josep Perelló is a full Professor at the Department of Condensed Matter Physics of the University of Barcelona and researcher at the University of Barcelona Institute of Complex Systems (UBICS). He leads OpenSystems-UB, a research group that developed scientific research projects in urban contexts through citizen participation and artistic practices. He also founded the Barcelona Citizen Science Office, a project promoted by the Barcelona City Council. He has run more than 25 collective citizen science experiments with more than 10,000 participants, mostly related to human behavior and social issues. Some of them are related to climate justice, climate action, air quality and urban heat. He has coordinated the CoAct (Co-designing Citizen Social Science for Collective Action) EU-funded project.

About the CoAct project
The CoAct project (2020-2023) focused on citizen cocial science understood as participatory research co-designed and directly driven by citizen groups sharing a social concern. The project launched a new approach to face social global concerns related to mental health care, youth employment, environmental justice and gender equality by engaging citizens as co-researchers from the design to the interpretation of the results and their transformation into concrete actions. The approach was based on the following principles to enable the provision of socially robust scientific knowledge: Thematic and local integration; Citizens as equal stakeholders; and Bottom-up collaboration for socially robust knowledge production. The aim is to promote social change and evidence­-informed policy and collective action based on a constant and open dialogue, both with citizens and in the public sphere.

Boshko Stankovski
Researcher in international law and international relations, and part of the YouCount advisory board as a former member of the European Youth Forum (EYF) Pool of Experts.

Boshko Stankovski has background in Law and holds an MPhil in international relations from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. He has been commissioned as an expert consultant, producing reports and case studies for the Danish Refugee Council, the Council of Europe and the Berghof Foundation, and also Co-founder and Member of Advisory Board, Centre for Intercultural Dialogue, North Macedonia. He has hold fellowship at the Harvard Law School, University of Graz, NATO Defence College and the European University Institute. He was a former member of the EYF Pool of Experts. Hiss field of expertise includes, inter alia, youth participation, youth capacity-building, youth and conflict, and human rights education.

About the European Youth Forum
The vision of the European Youth Forum is to be the voice of young people in Europe, where young people are equal citizens and are encouraged and supported to achieve their fullest potential as global citizens. The European Youth Forum is the biggest platform of youth organisations in Europe, representing over 100 youth organisations, which bring together tens of millions of young people from all over Europe. The European Youth Forum works to empower young people to participate actively in society to improve their own lives and advocates for their rights. The Youth Forum promotes youth participation, making young people catalysts for positive change and contributors of innovative solutions to Europe’s challenges.

Tomas De Groote
Knowledge manager, Sociale InnovatieFabriek, Brussels, Belgium.

Tomas De Groote has coordinated action research in the field of societal impact for social entrepreneurship and social investment at Sociale InnovatieFabriek since 2015, and before that worked for civil society organisations in the culture and youth sector. He has extensive experience with youth involved policymaking and practical innovation.

About the SocialeInnovatie Fabriek
The mission of Sociale InnovatieFabriek (‘Social Innovation Factory’) is to stimulate and support social innovation and social entrepreneurship in Flanders/Belgium, so that the major societal challenges can be tackled. Since the kickoff in summer 2013, more than 1000 concepts were supported by our programs and expertise, but also through our network of enablers, and access to finance.

Sandra Paola Alvarez
Senior Regional Thematic Specialist, Labour Mobility and Social Inclusion. Regional Office for the EEA, EU, and NATO. International Organization for Migration, Brussels. Belgium

Sandra Paola Alvarez provides thematic and strategic advice to IOM country Offices in the region within the areas of labour migration and ethical recruitment, migration and development, integration, and social cohesion. She also liaises with European Union (EU) Institutions and Member States on IOM policies and activities in these thematic areas. Previously, she was head of programming and research at IOM’s Coordination Office for the Mediterranean, and Migration and Development Specialist at IOM Headquarters in Geneva. . She is also representing IOM in YouCount advisory board.

About International Organization of Migration (IOM) UN & Regional Office for the EEA, the European Union and NATO (RO Brussels)
The IOM RO Brussel work is guided by IOM's Migration Governance Framework’s (MiGOF) principles and objectives, which aim to facilitate orderly, safe and regular migration and mobility of people through planned and well-managed migration policies, and the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the United Kingdom Regional Strategy 2020-2024. The Regional Office in Brussel supports policies, programmes and operations that pursue the well-being of migrants and societies through a rights-based approach to the governance of human mobility, to, from and within the region, which is coherent, holistic and balanced. The Office acts as IOM’s liaison and coordination office to the European Union (EU) and NATO and other key Brussels-based stakeholders. They support 28 IOM Country Offices in the region and IOM Offices worldwide on EU-related policy, programmes, legislation and cooperation and resource management and engage in a broad range of areas at the regional and global levels.

Claudia Fabó Cartas
Project officer at ECSA and Project Manager of the EU-funded project ECS

Claudia Fabó Cartas has worked at ECSA since 2021 and participated in several citizen science projects. By coordinating the ECS project, she holds a key position related to the developing of citizen science in the European context, and beyond.

About the European Citizen Science (ECS) project
European Citizen Science aims to create a globally connected, inclusive and strong citizen science community for societal change in Europe. The European Citizen Science project has the overall objective to widen and strengthen the citizen science community in Europe through capacity building and awareness raising activities, such as the creation of a European Citizen Science Academy and the establishment of a network of 28 ECS Ambassadors. It builds upon the previous EU-funded actions such as the eu-citizen.science project and Cos4Cloud and on the enormous achievements in citizen science over the past decade.

Laone Bukamu Hulela
Co-founder and Senior Adviser, Youth Alliance for Leadership and Development in Africa (YALDA)

Laone Bukamu Hulela is very passionate about inspiring young Africans to dare to dream and to adamantly pursue the implementation of their dreams and thereby show the greatness of the African continent and its people. She currently works as the Chief Investment Officer at Symbiotic Capital a pan African infrastructure investment fund. Prior she worked at Africa50 an infrastructure investment fund established by the African Development Bank. She holds an MBA with a Distinction from Harvard Business School and is also a graduate of Harvard College. Ms. Hulela has varied career experiences having worked for the United Nations in New York, where she also served as President of the United Nations Africa Club. Prior to this engagement, she was at McKinsey & Company in Johannesburg office and also worked at Standard Bank Africa in Corporate and Investment Banking.

About Youth Alliance for Leadership and Development in Africa (YALDA)
YALDA envisions an international network of inspired, empowered and proactive young African leaders who hold influential decision-making positions, are running their own organizations or companies, culminating in a prosperous and developed African continent. YALDA provides a forum for youth on the African continent and those abroad with a commitment to the welfare of Africa. By networking with professionals, mentors and each other, members will increase their capacity to take on positive leadership roles in their universities, countries and on the continent. Through YALDA, members will implement their short and long-term visions for Africa.