Science Advice Workshop –
Joint GYA-INGSA Europe event
AGM & Conference Opening
Strengthening Global Research Collaboration for Science as a Global Public Good
Panel I
AI Governance for a Shared Future: Science, Policy, and Global Equity
Panel II
Accelerating Discovery: AI’s Transformative Role in Natural Sciences and Engineering
Gala dinner
Kränholm Restaurant
Public Dialogue Session – Trust in Science, AI and Publishing
Panel III
AI at the Core of Disciplinary Foundations in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Welcome from the Co-Chairs
University College Cork, Ireland; University of Washington in Seattle, USA, Global Young Academy Co-Chair
Yensi is Co-Chair of the GYA and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Nobel Prize-awarded Institute for Protein Design (University of Washington) and the Cancer Research Centre at University College Cork. Her research applies cutting-edge computational protein design to engineer de novo proteins for cancer therapies and broader biomedical applications.
In addition to her scientific work, Yensi has co-founded multiple successful ventures, including an Irish diagnostics company and the first molecular biology research lab at the National University of Honduras.
Universiti Sains Malaysia, Discipline of Pharmaceutical Technology, Global Young Academy Co-Chair
Associate Professor Dr Chan Siok Yee is a fully registered pharmacist and a member of academic staff and program chair of discipline pharmaceutical technology in the School of Pharmaceutical Science, Universiti Sains Malaysia. she is a highly popular and well-regarded group member as her social skills and ability to work effectively with others are exceptional. After her PhD she joined as visiting researcher in School of Pharmacy, University College London when she was offered the position of Director of School of Pharmacy, UCL. At UCL, Siok Yee was working in electrospinning of pharmaceutical excipients and picked up new skills in nanofabrication.
Opening Speaker and Panellist
President elect of the International Science Council
Robbert Dijkgraaf is President-elect of the International Science Council and a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Amsterdam. He is a mathematical physicist and academic leader who recently served as minister of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands and director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is an experienced public policy adviser having served as President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the InterAcademy Partnership. For his contributions to science, he has received the Spinoza Prize, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands.
Opening discussion panel: Strengthening Global Research Collaboration for Science as a Global Public Good
Co-Chair of the InterAcademy Partnership, President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Marileen Dogterom, Professor of Bionanoscience at TU Delft has been President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since June 2022. Marileen is an internationally acclaimed researcher, being one of the pioneers in the field of biomolecular and cellular physics. Her research focuses on the cytoskeleton: the microtubules that give living cells their shape and mechanical function. Dogterom leads a national consortium BaSyC (“Building a Synthetic Cell”) as one of the means of attempting to understand the processes of life by building cellular modules from the bottom-up. In addition, she co-leads SynCellEU, an initiative that aims to promote research collaboration on this topic within Europe, as well as collaboration with similar communities in the USA and Asia.
Executive Director of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS)
Marcelo Knobel serves as Executive Director of The World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in developing countries (TWAS), a position he assumed in December 2024. A distinguished physicist and science advocate, Dr. Knobel brings more than three decades of experience in higher education leadership, scientific research, and science communication. He previously served as Rector of the University of Campinas (Unicamp) in Brazil from 2017 to 2021, where he has been a faculty member for 30 years. With more than 300 scientific publications and numerous prestigious awards—including Brazil’s most distinguished science and technology honor—Dr. Knobel is internationally recognized for his contributions to physics research, educational innovation, and science popularization.
President of the Arab-German Young Academy (AGYA), Catholic University in Erbil, and GYA member.
Dr. Abdulsatar Abduljabbar Sultan is a distinguished lecturer and Head of the Business Management Department at the Catholic University in Erbil. He holds a PhD in Technology Management from Universiti Utara Malaysia and has extensive academic and leadership experience in Iraq and abroad. He is Co-President of the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities (AGYA) and the founder of Iraq’s first green mobile library, promoting education and sustainability. His research interests include knowledge management, innovation, and sustainable development, with a focus on interdisciplinary and international collaboration.
Human Sciences Research Council, former Co-Chair South African Young Academy of Science (SAYAS) and GYA member.
Dr Natisha Dukhi is a Senior Research Specialist at the Human Sciences Research Council and PhD-qualified public health scientist with over a decade of experience across Africa and globally. Her expertise spans nutrition, child and adolescent health, non-communicable diseases, and science diplomacy. A Principal Investigator and prolific published researcher, she informs public health policy in underserved communities. She serves on the South African Young Academy of Science, the Global Young Academy, and the International Science Council’s Global Roster of Experts. Dr Dukhi is a recipient of the prestigious Gro Brundtland Award for outstanding contributions to Public Health and Sustainable Development.
Visiting Professor and Chair for the History of Nineteenth-Century Europe, Humboldt University Berlin, member of die Junge Akademie
Kerstin is an historian of selfhood, emotions, and moral culture in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. Her research examines how people interpreted social and political change through practices of reading, writing, and reflection. Drawing on diaries, letters, autobiographies, and other ego-documents, Kerstin studies how experiences of war, religion, sociability, and empire shaped historical understandings of personhood and moral responsibility.
Opening Panel Moderator
Director of the Institute of Photovoltaics, University of Stuttgart, alumni and former Co-Chair of the GYA, alumnus of die Junge Akademie, Member of Acatech.
Michael is a full professor and Director of the Institute for Photovoltaics at Stuttgart University, Germany, with a dual appointment as Head of the Helmholtz Young Investigator Group FRONTRUNNER at the Research Center Jülich, Germany.
Previously, he was a professor at TU Darmstadt, a Group Leader at the University of Fribourg, and a Marie Curie Fellow at EPFL. He completed his PhD in 2014 at Oxford University.
Panel I - AI Governance for a Shared Future: Science, Policy, and Global Equity
The Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST), Tanzania, and GYA member
Dr. Neema Mduma is a computer scientist and senior lecturer at the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST). She founded the BakiShule initiative, which promotes STEM education to girls in secondary schools in Tanzania. She is also a Principal Investigator on several projects that apply Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to solve challenges within agriculture, health, and education sectors. She currently serves as a reviewer for scientific journals, workshops and conferences including the International Conference of Machine Learning (ICML). Additionally, Dr. Mduma has contributed as a technical team member in multiple drafting key national and international frameworks, including the Tanzania Development Vision 2050 and UNESCO’s Artificial Intelligence Readiness Assessment Methodology (RAM).
Executive Director, Globethics
Laureate of the Elevate Prize for Global thinkers and change-makers (2020), Fadi Daou is since 2023 the Executive Director of Globethics, 2025 Champion of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Globethics is an international NGO based in Geneva, Switzerland, with regional centers across the continents, promoting ethical leadership and responsible governance for a just, inclusive, and sustainable world. Previously, between 2006 and 2020, he was founding Chairperson and CEO of Adyan Foundation (based in Lebanon, Iraq, and France), working for diversity management and peacebuilding, and winner of the Niwano Peace Prize (2018). He recently contributed with Globethics to the launch of the UNESCO Global Civil Society Organizations and Academic Network on AI Ethics and Policy.
CEO and Founder, Personal Algorithms; AI Governance Leader
Soribel Feliz is the founder and CEO of Personal Algorithms, an AI governance consulting
firm based in the United States. Her career spans the U.S. Senate the Department of
Homeland Security AI Corps, the U.S. State Department, and senior roles at Microsoft
and Meta. She holds CIPP/E, CIPM, CIPP/US, and Algorithmic Auditing certifications and
brings a practitioner’s perspective to AI governance, one built from the inside of
American institutions across government, technology, and regulated industries. She is the creator of the
“Algorithms Are Personal” framework, which positions AI governance as a lived
experience across Livelihood, Education, Community, and Policy.
Associate Professor, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and GYA Member
Emilija Stojmenova Duh, Ph.D., is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, and former Minister of Digital Transformation of Slovenia. Her work focuses on digital transformation, interoperability, and the societal impact of emerging technologies. She chairs the informal expert group on the Next Generation European Interoperability Framework at DG DIGIT and is a member of ESIR, advising the European Commission on research and innovation policy. She also chairs ALLEA’s Task Force on Trust in Science and serves on the Board of Globethics, promoting ethical leadership, responsible governance, and the ethics of AI.
Panel I Moderator
Founder, SciPolicy Global Strategies LLC, and GYA Member
Luz is an immunologist, policy advisor, and science communicator dedicated to advancing equity, international collaboration, and public engagement in science and policy. She recently served as an Advisor for Sustainability at the U.S. Department of State, where she supported the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). As an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow, she contributed to U.S.-Mexico health cooperation at the State Department and supported Arab-Israeli scientific collaboration through USAID’s Middle East Regional Cooperation (MERC) Program. She was recognized with the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Science Defender Award for her COVID-19 communication efforts in Spanish. She recently founded SciPolicy Global Strategies, LLC, offering consulting services and workshops that empower early-career scientists to engage in science communication and evidence-informed policymaking around the world.
Panel II - Accelerating Discovery: AI's Transformative Role in Natural Sciences and Engineering
President of the European Academies Science Advisory Council
Lise serves as President of EASAC from 2026 onwards. She is a professor in Geomicrobiology at University of Bergen, Norway and was President of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Norway (DNVA) in 2022 – 2024. She holds a PhD degree in microbiology from the University of Bergen from 1998 and became a full professor in 2007. She was part of the Norwegian Research Funded Center of Excellence (COE) in Geobiology at University of Bergen from 2007 – 2012 where she led the working group “The Deep Biosphere”. Through the CoE she took part in several fieldworks and research cruises in the Arctic Ocean as well as in the Pacific Ocean. Her research interest is microbial diversity and ecology along environmental gradients. She is especially interested in studying the impact of climate change on microbial communities, including the impact of warming of permafrost soils and glacier ecosystems. She has been involved in Arctic fieldwork and research projects for more than 25 years.
University of Applied Sciences Weihenstephan-Triesdorf and Technical University of Munich, Campus Straubing for Biotechnology and Sustainability
Prof. Grimm works at the intersection of bioinformatics and machine learning to advance data-driven innovation in the bioeconomy. He develops cutting-edge AI, statistical, and computational methods to understand complex biological systems and to model, analyse, and optimise biochemical properties for sustainable applications. He studied bioinformatics at Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Sciences, graduating in 2011 after stays at the University of Cambridge, the European Bioinformatics Institute, and UNSW Sydney. He earned his doctorate in 2015 at the MPI for Developmental Biology, the MPI for Intelligent Systems, and the University of Tübingen. After postdoctoral work at ETH Zurich and industry experience, he became Professor at TUM Campus Straubing in 2018.
Principal Scientist, Council of Scientific & Industrial Research – Central Scientific Instruments Organisation; INYAS Member
Rishemjit is a Principal Scientist at CSIR-Central Scientific Instruments Organisation, Chandigarh and an Associate Professor at the Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR). She specializes in artificial intelligence and big data analytics, focusing on modelling social phenomena using agent-based models and natural language processing for social good, particularly in agriculture, nutrition, and food. She is developing large language models tailored for Indian farmers in local languages. She is a member of NASI and INYAS and has received multiple honors, including the IEI Young Engineer Award, the Japanese Government MEXT Scholarship and representation at the BRICS Young Scientist Forum.
Panel II Moderator
Constructor University Bremen (Germany, EU), Program Chair for the Robotics and Intelligent Systems Program, and GYA Member
Francesco is a Professor in Marine Systems and Robotics at Constructor University, in Bremen (Germany, EU), where he also serves as Program Chair for the Robotics and Intelligent Systems Program. He has obtained his PhD at the Oceans Sytems Lab, Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh, Scotland. He has been Scientific Manager at Technical University of Munich (Germany, EU) where he lead European-wide initiatives to support moving robotics technology from the lab to the market. After a research stay at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA, USA), as a Marie Curie Fellow, he has accepted a faculty position in Jacobs University Bremen, currently Constructor University.
President of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
Bettina Rockenbach is a German economist, and is the first woman to be elected President of the Leopoldina. Her research focuses on the design of mechanisms to promote cooperation in social dilemma situations and on conditions for socially responsible economic action.her partly interdisciplinary teams have been able to demonstrate the importance and interaction of trust, reciprocity, reputation and social sanctions for stable cooperation. They have contributed to a better understanding of the market conditions for moral and socially responsible action and have successfully developed and implemented mechanisms for a more sustainable use of natural resources.
Public Dialogue Session - Trust in Science, AI and Publishing
Vice President of Research Collaborations at Elsevier Research Collaborations Unit
Anita de Waard is VP of Research Collaborations at Elsevier. Her work focuses on working with academic and industry partners on projects pertaining to progressing models and frameworks for scholarly communication. Her efforts include working on a semantic model for research papers, co-founding the interdisciplinary member organization Force11, and supporting models for research data management in cross-stakeholder alliances such as the Research Data Alliance and the NIST Research Data Framework, and through a series of workshops on Scholarly Document Processing. Since 2024, she is a trustee of the Cambridge Crystallographic Network. Her current work focuses on developing collaborations to improve trust, reproducibility and research integrity in scholarly communications. Anita has a degree in low-temperature physics from Leiden and worked in Moscow before joining Elsevier as a physics publisher in 1988.
Panel III - AI at the Core of Disciplinary Foundations in the Humanities and Social Sciences
National University of Science and Technology (NUST) Zimbabwe, ICTS Department Director.
Vusumuzi Maphosa holds a PhD in Information Systems and Technology and serves as the Director of Information and Communication Technology Services at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST). With over ten years of experience developing and managing information systems for learning institutions. He brings deep expertise in his roles as Vice-Chairperson of the IEEE AI in Education SHIELD Initiative, member of the IEEE Computer Society chapter, and Head of Infrastructure and Technology at the Internet Society of Zimbabwe. His research interests include artificial intelligence, ICT4D, educational technology, and information systems strategy. He also supervises postgraduate students.
Founding President of the International Institute of Scientific Research, Member of Expert Group for the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence UNESCO, Morocco
Fatima Roumate is a Full Professor of International Economic Law and Artificial Intelligence at the Faculty of Law, Economics, and Social Sciences – Agdal, Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco. She is also the Founding President of the International Institute of Scientific Research (IISR), established in Marrakech in 2010, and the Founder of the Global Network on Artificial Intelligence and International Society (GNAI&IS). She served as a Member of the UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group for the development of the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and as a Member of the Information Ethics Working Group under UNESCO’s Information for All Programme (IFAP) since 2020. She was also part of the Moroccan delegation in the intergovernmental negotiations on UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence.
Panel III Moderator
Institute of Cognition and Behavior at Vienna University of Economics and Business, and GYA-Member
Rima-Maria Rahal received PhD from Leiden University for her work on cognitive decision processes in social and moral dilemmas, which she completed at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn. After positions in Frankfurt, Tilburg, Bonn, and Heidelberg, she is now a researcher on tenure track at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law. She works on her Habilitation project on processes of normative decisions at Heidelberg University. She is active in Open Science, an alumna of the Fellowship Program Freies Wissen and a former member of the steering group of the German Reproducibility Network.