14.06.2018

International Advisory Board to advise University Management on Strategic Issues

Expert group convenes again – this year’s main topic: the Excellence Strategy

The University of Tübingen’s International Advisory Board was on campus Monday, 11th June and Tuesday, 12th June. This is the third meeting of the high-level expert group that convened last in 2016. The Board advises the University Management on strategic issues, this year with a special focus on the Excellence Strategy of the German Federal and State Governments. In the midst of preparations for the application of new Clusters of Excellence and the overarching institutional strategy funding line, the International Advisory Board provides an international perspective on the current plans and provides impulses for further development.

The International Advisory Board was initiated in the framework of the Excellence Initiative in 2014. It consists of scientists and scholars from internationally renowned universities and different academic disciplines who occupy leadership positions either at their home universities or in national scientific organizations.

The Members of the International Advisory Board:

• Professor Eva Åkesson has been Vice-Chancellor of the University of Uppsala, Sweden, since 1 January 2012. She is a professor of chemical physics and has previously been Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lund with special responsibility for basic and advanced studies, quality assurance, and internationalization.
• Professor Carol L. Folt was installed as 11th Chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) in October 2013 and is the first woman to hold this position. She is an environmental scientist and came to North Carolina from Dartmouth College, where she was interim president in 2012-2013, and a faculty member and administrator for 30 years.
• Professor Masashi Haneda was Vice-President for International Affairs of the University of Tokyo from 2012-2015 and Executive Vice-President in 2016. He is a historian and has been Director of the University of Tokyo’s Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia since 2010. Haneda has been an Associate Member for the Humanities of the Science Council of Japan since 2006.
• Professor Chris Higgins was Vice-Chancellor at the University of Durham, UK, from 2007-2014. His research has focused on molecular biology. Before coming to Durham, he was Nuffield Professor and Head of the Department of Clinical Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, and Director of the Medical Research Council as well as Head of Division at Imperial College.
• Professor Antonio Loprieno has been President of the University of Basel, Switzerland from 2006 to 2015 and headed the Conference of Swiss University Rectors (CRUS) from 2008 to 2015. Since May 2018 he also serves as President of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences. He has been full Professor of Egyptology at Basel since 2000, and was previously full professor of Egyptology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
• Professor Sijbolt Noorda is President Emeritus of the University of Amsterdam and former President of the Association of Dutch Research Universities. He is currently President of the Academic Cooperation Association, a Brussels-based think tank that seeks to promote international cooperation in the field of higher education. Noorda is a theologian focusing on the cultural history of religions in Europe.
• Professor Pamela Schirmeister serves as both Dean of Strategic Initiatives for Yale College, The Graduate School, and the FAS Dean’s office, and as Dean of Undergraduate Education at Yale College. Her academic training is in nineteenth-century American literature. Her research interests also include the relation between philosophy and literature, psychoanalytic theory, and biography.

Remke Lohmann