Some biographical information on the members of the advisory committee for the reform of Greek Universities.
David Naylor (Professor of Medicine), CANADA
David Naylor has been President of the University of Toronto since 2005. He earned his MD at Toronto in 1978, followed by a D Phil at Oxford where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Naylor completed clinical specialty training and joined the Department of Medicine of the University of Toronto in 1988. He was founding Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (1991-1998), before becoming Dean of Medicine and Vice Provost for Relations with Health Care Institutions of the University of Toronto (1999 - 2005). Naylor has co-authored approximately 300 scholarly publications, spanning social history, public policy, epidemiology and biostatistics, and health economics, as well as clinical and health services research in most fields of medicine. Among other honours, Naylor is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Foreign Associate Fellow of the US Institute of Medicine, and an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Gavin Brown. (Professor of Mathematics), AUSTRALIA
Former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney. (retired as Vice-Chancellor on 10 July 2008).
At the University of New South Wales, Brown held a number of academic administrative posts, including Head of the Department of Pure Mathematics, Head of the School of Mathematics, and Dean of the Faculty of Science. In 1992, he became the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of Adelaide; later, in 1994, he became the Vice-Chancellor. He took up his final position as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney in 1996.
Brown was actively involved in the work of the Australian Research Council as a chairman of various funding committees from 1988-1993, and a member of the Council from 1992-1993.
Brown has authored more than a hundred research papers and he is on the board of several international journals. His research areas have been broad, including measure theory and algebraic geometry. He holds a Master of Arts degree (1st Class Honours and the Duncan Medal) from University of St Andrews (1963), a PhD from University of Newcastle upon Tyne (1966), an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of St Andrews (1997), and an honorary Doctor of Laws by the University of Dundee (2004). In 2006, Brown was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia.
Gudmund Hernes (Professor of Social Science), DENMARK
President International Social Science Council (ISSC), a scholar at the Norwegian Institute for Labour and Social Research and a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
He was the state secretary to the Secretariat for Long-Term Planning 1980-1981, Minister of Education and Research and Ministry of Church and Cultural Affairs (church affairs) 1990, Minister of Education, Research and Church Affairs 1991-1995 and Minister of Health and Social Affairs (health affairs) 1995-1996 and 1996-1997.
Hernes holds a PhD in Sociology from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He became a Professor of Sociology at the University of Bergen (Norway) in 1969, where he was also Chairman of the Sociology Department and Director of the University’s Centre for Advanced Training in Social Research. Later he became a Professor at the University of Oslo. He was a fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, Palo Alto, during the 1974-75 semesters, and twice Visiting Professor at Harvard University, in 1986 and in 1990.
James J. Duderstadt (Professor of Science and Engineering), USA
President Emeritus, University Professor of Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan and Director, the Millennium Project.
A graduate of Yale (B.S.E. in electrical engineering) and Caltech (M.S. and Ph.D. in engineering science and physics), Dr. Duderstadt’s teaching, research, and publishing activities include nuclear science and engineering, applied physics, computer simulation, science policy, and higher education policy. He has served on and chaired numerous National Academy and federal commissions including the National Science Board; the National Academies' Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy; the DOE's Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee; and the NSF’s Advisory Committee on Cyberinfrastructure, and the Intelligence Science Board. He has received numerous awards including the E. O. Lawrence Award for excellence in nuclear research, the Arthur Holly Compton Prize for outstanding teaching, the Reginald Wilson Award for national leadership in achieving diversity, and the National Medal of Technology for exemplary service to the nation. He is currently co-director of the program in Science, Technology, and Public Policy in the Ford School and director of the Millennium Project, a research center exploring the impact of over-the-horizon technologies on society, located in the James and Anne Duderstadt Center on the University's North Campus.
Jozef Ritzen (Professor of Economics), NETHERLANDS
Jo Ritzen is the President of the Universiteit Maastricht, where he advanced the international position of the university (attracting now 50% of its students from abroad) and the education quality (through problem based learning).
Before assuming his current position in February 2003, Mr. Ritzen was Vice President of the World Bank’s Development Economics Department. He assumed this position in August 1999. In July 2001 he assumed the position Vice President of the World Bank's Human Development Network, which advises the institution and its client countries on innovative approaches to improving health, education and social protection. Mr. Ritzen joined the Bank as Special Adviser to the Human Development Network in September 1998.
Prior to coming to the Bank, he was Minister of Education, Culture, and Science of The Netherlands, one of the longest-serving Ministers of Education in the world. During his term, he enacted a series of major reforms throughout the Dutch education system. Mr. Ritzen has also made significant contributions to agencies such as UNESCO and OECD, especially in the field of education and social cohesion. Prior to his appointment as Minister in 1989, Mr. Ritzen held academic appointments with Nijmegen University and Erasmus University in The Netherlands, and the University of California-Berkeley and the Robert M. LaFollette Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States.
Mr. Ritzen obtained a master's degree in physical engineering in 1970 from the University of Technology in Delft, and a PhD in economics in 1977 from Erasmus University in Rotterdam. His dissertation on education, economic growth, and income distribution earned him the Winkler Prins prize.
John Sexton (Professor of law), USA
Sexton is the fifteenth President of New York University, having held this position since May 17, 2002, and is the Benjamin Butler Professor of Law at the NYU School of Law. From 1988 to 2002, he served as Dean of the NYU School of Law, which during his deanship became one of the top five law schools in the country, according to U.S. News and World Report. From January 1, 2003 to January 1, 2007, he was the Chairman of the Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; in 2006, he served as chair of the Federal Reserve System's Council of Chairs.
Sexton holds a B.A. in history (1963), an M.A. in comparative religion (1965), a Ph.D. in history of American religion (1978) from Fordham University, as well as a J.D. (1979) magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was Supreme Court Editor of the Harvard Law Review. He clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger.
During Sexton’s presidency, NYU has expanded its arts and science faculty by 20 percent; has opened a highly selective new campus in Abu Dhabi – “the world’s honor college” -- thereby becoming the first major US university to operate a comprehensive liberal arts abroad; has successfully concluded what was at the time the largest completed fundraising campaign in American higher education (over $3 billion); has increased the percentage of NYU students studying abroad to over 40 percent, opened several new Study Away academic centers, and been recognized by the Institute for International Education for sending more students abroad than any other US university.
Linda Katehi (Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering), USA
Linda Katehi became the sixth chancellor of the University of California, Davis, on August 17, 2009. As chief executive officer, she oversees all aspects of the university’s teaching, research and public service mission.
Chancellor Katehi (kah-TAY-hee) also holds UC Davis faculty appointments in electrical and computer engineering and in women and gender studies. A member of the National Academy of Engineering, she chaired until 2010 the President’s Committee for the National Medal of Science and the Secretary of Commerce’s committee for the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. She is a fellow and board member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of many other national boards and committees.
Previously, Chancellor Katehi served as provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign; the John A. Edwardson Dean of Engineering and professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University; and associate dean for academic affairs and graduate education in the College of Engineering and professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan.
Since her early years as a faculty member, Chancellor Katehi has focused on expanding research opportunities for undergraduates and improving the education and professional experience of graduate students, with an emphasis on underrepresented groups. She has mentored more than 70 postdoctoral fellows, doctoral and master’s students in electrical and computer engineering. Twenty-one of the 42 doctoral students who graduated under her supervision have become faculty members in research universities in the United States and abroad.
Her work in electronic circuit design has led to numerous national and international awards both as a technical leader and educator, 17 U.S. patents, and an additional six U.S. patent applications. She is the author or co-author of 10 book chapters and about 600 refereed publications in journals and symposia proceedings.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in 1977, and her master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from UCLA in 1981 and 1984, respectively.
The University of California, Davis, is one of 10 UC campuses and one of a select group of 62 North American universities admitted to membership in the prestigious Association of American Universities.
Patrick Aebischer (Professor of Medical Science), SWITZERLAND
President of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.Patrick Aebischer was trained as an MD (1980) and a Neuroscientist (1983) at the University of Geneva and Fribourg in Switzerland.
From 1984 to 1992, he worked at Brown University in Providence (Rhode Island, United States), as an Assistant and then Associate Professor of Medical Sciences. In 1991, he became the chairman of the Section of Artificial Organs, Biomaterials and Cellular Technology of the Division of Biology and Medicine of Brown University. In the fall of 1992, he returned to Switzerland as a Professor and Director of the Surgical Research Division and Gene Therapy Center at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) in Lausanne.
In 1999, Patrick Aebischer was nominated President of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) by the Swiss Federal Council.
He took office as President on March 2000. Since then, he has significantly built EPFL’s reputation as one of Europe's foremost interdisciplinary scientific institutions. Patrick Aebischer's own current research at EPFL, where he teaches neurosciences, focuses on the development of cell and gene transfer approaches for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. He is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, a fellow of the Swiss Academy of Medicine and founder of three biotech companies.
Professor Lap-Chee Tsui is the fourteenth Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong.
Prior to his present appointment in September 2002, Professor Tsui was Geneticist-in-Chief and Head of the Genetics and Genomic Biology Program of the Research Institute, at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
Born in Shanghai and awarded his bachelor and master's degrees from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Professor Tsui is a native of Hong Kong. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1979. After a brief training in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, he joined the Department of Genetics at The Hospital for Sick Children. He received international acclaim in 1989 when he identified the defective gene that causes cystic fibrosis, which is a major breakthrough in human genetics. He has also made significant contributions to the study of the human genome, especially the characterization of chromosome 7, and, identification of additional disease genes. He has 300 peer-reviewed scientific publications and 65 invited book chapters and papers.
Professor Tsui has received numerous awards and honours for his outstanding work over the years. His honours include Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Fellow of the Royal Society of London, Fellow of Academia Sinica, Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), and Foreign Member, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In addition to many national and international prizes, he was awarded honorary doctoral degrees by University of King's College, University of New Brunswick, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, St. Francis Xavier University, York University, Tel Aviv University, University of Toronto, University of Aberdeen and King's College London and University of Edinburgh.
He is currently member of the Judicial Officers Recommendation Commission, Executive Committee of the Commission on Strategic Development and the Advisory Committee on Corruption of the Hong Kong SAR Government. He received the Order of Canada (Officer), the Order of Ontario, Knight of the Légion d'Honneur of France, and the title of Justice of the Peace (HKSAR)
