Today, Prof. Sylvie Lorente has been announced as a new member of the governing body of the European Research Council (ERC), the Scientific Council. Prof. Lorente has been appointed by the European Commission for an initial period of four years and her mandate runs retroactively from 1 July 2022.
Prof. Lorente is Associate Dean for Research & Innovation at the College of Engineering at Villanova University, USA, where she is also College of Engineering Chair Professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering. Furthermore, she is Professor (Exceptional Class) at the National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA), University of Toulouse, France.
Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, said: “I am pleased to welcome Sylvie Lorente to the ERC Scientific Council. She will help complement the expertise of the other sitting members, the outstanding female and male researchers who govern Europe’s premier organisation for funding frontier research.”
Prof. Maria Leptin, President of the ERC, said: “We look forward to having Prof. Lorente as our colleague in the Scientific Council. The members of the ERC’s independent governing body cover the full breadth of science and scholarship, representing the scientific community in Europe. Thanks go to the identification committee for its important work proposing new members to ensure continuity and quality.”
The ERC Scientific Council, composed of 22 distinguished scientists and scholars representing the European scientific community, is the independent governing body of the ERC. Its central role is setting the ERC strategy and selecting peer review evaluators.
New members are selected by an independent Identification Committee, composed of six distinguished scientists appointed by the European Commission and chaired by Prof. Carl-Henrik Heldin. The scientific community is consulted in this process.
Biography
Sylvie Lorente is the Associate Dean for Research & Innovation in the College of Engineering at Villanova University, PA, USA. She is Professor (Exceptional Class) at the National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA), University of Toulouse, France. In 2019, she joined Villanova University where she holds the position of College of Engineering Chair Professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering.
She was appointed Hung Hing-Ying Distinguished Visiting Professorship in Science and Technology at Hong Kong University (Hong Kong) in 2017. Sylvie Lorente is also Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria (South Africa), and Adjunct Professor at Duke University, USA. She is a member of the Academia Europaea.
She is editor of the International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer, and member of several other editorial boards. Sylvie Lorente has a passion for flow architectures, and works on thermal design, energy storage, vascularized structures, porous media, biological flow networks, urban design and organisations. Together with her group, she uncovers the engineered and biological hierarchical flow pathways that endow complex systems with efficient properties and behaviors. She is the author of 7 books, 10 book chapters and 200+ peer-reviewed international journal papers. She is listed amongst the 2% most cited scientists worldwide.
About the ERC
The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers four main grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. Since November 2021, Maria Leptin has been the President of the ERC and Chair of its Scientific Council. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than €16 billion, as part of the Horizon Europe programme, under the responsibility of the European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel.
