Building Bridges 2025

Class meetings (A1-A2-B and C)  

Class A1 – Welcome and brief self-presentations by new members

Class A2 – Welcome and brief self-presentations by new members

Class B – Welcome and brief self-presentations by new members

Class C – 09:00-09:15 Introduction to Class and its sections
09:15-11:00 Welcome and short introductions by participating new members

Class meetings (A1-A2-B and C) 

Class A1: – Chair Sessions

Class A2: “Rethinking Social Science in an Age of Rupture”. This session invites Class A2 members to reflect critically on the role of the social sciences in addressing today’s defining challenges. Rather than only diagnosing crises, how can our disciplines actively shape alternative futures?

Rob van Tulder, MAE, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Growth and beyond: Social innovation, sustainable prosperity, and global public goods

Jonathan White, MAE, European Institute, London

Democratic resilience and climate breakdown

Chris Hann, MAE, Planck Institute, Halle

Freedom, work, and transitions in a decarbonizing/digitalizing economy

Antje Wiener, MAE, University of Hamburg

From ruptures to a new global order

Class B: Brief presentations by new members continue

Class C: Highlight talks from new members in each section

11:45-12-10 Julia Vorholt, MAE, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Establishing causality: Opportunities of synthetic communities for plant microbiome research

11:45-12-10 Jiri Friml, MAE, ISTA, Vienna, Austria

Rewriting the Rules of Plant Signalling: The Surprising Role of cAMP

Chair of the session: Balázs Gulyás, MAE, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm

12:10-12:35 Monica Di Luca, MAE, University of Milan, Italy

Dynamic synapses and the long arm to the nucleus

Chair of the session: Andràs Baldi, MAE, Centre for Ecological Research, Institute of Ecology and Botany, Vácrátót, Hungary

12:35-13:00 Milan Chytrý, MAE Masaryk University, Czech Republic

Biodiversity loss in European vegetation.

Continued Class sessions and YAE Meeting

Class A1:  Chair Sessions

Class A2: Coffee and Conversations

Informal discussions at thematic tables followed by brief reporting from each group.

Class B: Artificial Intelligence Workshop with presentations by

Metin Sitti, MAE, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey

ML for Small-Scale Soft Robot Design and Control

Lionel Briand, MAE, LERO, University of Limerick, Ireland

Automated Testing and Safety Analysis of Deep Neural Networks 

Rachid Guerraoui, MAE, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

Towards a Safe AI

Erol Gelenbe. MAE, IITIS-PAN, Poland

Random Neural Networks: Parametrization and Learning for Cyberattack Detection

Class C:

14:00-14:25 Csaba Szabo, MAE, University of Fribourg, Switzerland

NO, CO, H2S, CN: the growing family of mammalian gaseous transmitters

14:25- 14:50 Stefan M. Pfister, MAE, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany

Molecular tumor classification – translating discoveries into patient benefit

14:50- 15:55 Future activities and planning; membership and task force topics.

Open discussion related to views of the section chairs and potential reform of sections; overview of the membership, including missing candidates and emerging/underrepresented fields; the potential for new task force topics and involvement of YAE.

08.30- 09.00

Check-in for conference participants not attending Class meetings

Registration desk at PRBB

09.00-10.30

Opening of Plenary conferece

– Don Dingwell, MAE, President elected of Academia Europaea

– Jaume Bertranpetit, MAE, Director of the Barcelona Hub

– Janez Potočnik, former EU commissioner, The 5th Freedom/Letta Report lecture

 – Erasmus Medal Winner 2025 Laudatio by prof. Janov Pach, MAE, Eötvös Lórand University

– Lecture by Prof. Lászlò Lovàsz, MAE, Eötvös Lórand University

General session by Exact Sciences section

Chair: Paolo Papale, MAE, Instituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Italy, class B chair

– Hans Oerlemans, MAE, Balzan Prize 2022, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

 The role of glaciers in the evolution of the Earth

– Licia Verde, MAE UB, Spain

Precision cosmology: threading a needle from the other end of the Universe

– Eugenio Coccia, MAE, IFAE, Spain

Gravitational Waves: from the Einstein prediction to the Einstein Telescope

Sydney Brenner Memorial Lecture by Dr. Markus Ralser, Charité, Berlin, Germany

Kathryn Lilley, MAE, University of Cambridge,UK

Laudation and award ceremony

General sessions by Class C: Life Sciences

Chair: Eva Kondorosi, MAE, Biological Research Centre, Hungary, class C chair

– Dennis Lo, MAE, President of Hong Kong Academy of Sciences, Xina

Non-invasive prenatal testing and cancer detection

– Jens Stougaard, MAE, Aarhus University, Denmark

 Genetics of nitrogen-fixing root nodules in legumes

– Mart Saarma, MAE, University of Helsinki, Finland

Presentation on neurogenerative diseases

ANDRÉ MISCHKE Lecture by Agnieszka Wykowska, MAE, Instituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy

Presentation by Scott Bremer, YAE chair, University of Bergen, Norway

Human-robots interaction: How robots can address sociaetal needs

Art and Science Lecture

Marta de Menezes, Lisboa, Portugal

Art and Immunology – A Love Story

General Sessions by Class A1 session: Humanities

Chair: Genoveva Martí, MAE, UB, Barcelona, Spain and Class A1 Chair
– Mark Steedman, MAE, University of Edingburg, Scotland

Natural Language and Artificial Intelligence

– Johan Rooryck, MAE, Leiden University, The Netherlands

Towards Equitable Open Access Publishing

– Pontus Skoglund, MAE, The Francis Crick Institute, London, UK

Genetic history in first millennium CE Europe

General sessions by Class A2 : Social and Related Sciences

Chair: Martin Kahanec, MAE, Central European University, Vienna, Austria and Class A2 chair
Panel Theme: Democracy, Prosperity, and Sociality within Planetary Boundaries

– Guy Midgley, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

 Planetary boundaries and the fragility of abundance (to be confirmed)

– Nebojsa Nakicenovic, MAE, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Hungary

 The political economy of just transitions (to be confirmed)

– Hartmut Rosa, MAE, University of Erfurt, Germany

 Cultural narratives and social imagination

General session organized by the Young Academy of Europe (YAE)

Public trust in science and navigating political tensions

Public trust in scientists can help policymaking institutions to decide on the basis of available evidence, but we witness recent political hostilities towards research institutions, and academic freedom and integrity. Indeed, the boundary between science and politics has always been contested, with some seeking to harden this boundary, while others see it as more malleable. And at the same time, most people today trust scientists and agree that they should engage more in society. Against this background, this panel will host multiple perspectives on how scientists – as individuals and as a group – navigate social and political polarization on the role and organisation of science in Europe today. To the extent that scientists work within a politicised context, what affordances and strategies do they deploy to establish science’s role in society and relate to political trends.

Moderator: Scott Bremer, MAE, President of YAE

Panelists:

Ruth Rodriguez-Martínez, UPF, Spain

Anna Kuppuswamy, University of Leeds, UK

Emilian Mihailov, University of Bucharest, Romania

Manuel Soto, Basque University, Spain