László Lovász Appointed to the EU Scientific Council

Mathematician and former president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA), László Lovász, has appointed by the European Commission as of three new members, for a term of four years, to the Scientific Council, the governing body of the European Research Council (ERC), Europe's main scientific organization.

The other new members are astrophysicist Chryssa Kouveliotou, professor at George Washington University in the United States, and Giovanni Sartor, professor of law at the University of Bologna.

"The leadership of the MTA is delighted to receive this news and congratulates Professor László Lovász on his appointment, which is an exceptional scientific recognition," MTA's website says.

The European Research Council (ERC), established by the European Union in 2007, is the most important European research funding organization for supporting the most outstanding exploratory research. The ERC is governed by an independent governing body, the Scientific Council. The main task of the 22-member Scientific Council, which is composed of eminent scientists, is to define the ERC's strategy and select the experts who will evaluate proposals. The ERC has a budget of over EUR 16 billion between 2021 and 2027 as part of the EU's Horizon Europe framework program.

László Lovász has twice won ERC Excellence Grants, most recently in 2019 with two research colleagues, Albert-László Barabási and Jaroslav Nesetril, on a Synergy Grant research project of nearly EUR 10 million, led by the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics in Hungary. Previously, another Hungarian, Éva Kondorosi, biologist and ERC Vice President for Life Sciences, participated in the Scientific Council.