ERC Appoint New Secretary General

Professor Donald B. Dingwell has been appointed by the European Research Council (ERC) as their new Secretary General, a post that he will hold for the next two years.

Professor Dingwell is an experimental volcanologist and is currently the head of the Department for Earth and Environmental Sciences at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. Originally from Canada, he has been working in Germany since 1987 and holds dual nationality. He has received a number of highly regarded scientific distinctions, including the 2008 Bunsen Medal of the European Geoscience Union for his studies on the physicochemical properties of magmas.

Professor Dingwell follows in the footsteps of the previous Secretary General, Professor Andreu Mas-Colell, who has now returned to his academic position at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. The ERC Secretary General is the Scientific Council’s permanent representative in Brussels whose role it is to maintain effective liaison between the Scientific Council, the ERC Executive Agency and the European Commission.

ERC President Professor Helga Nowotny commented: “As we move towards the new common strategic framework for research and innovation ‘Horizon 2020’, we very much look forward to working with Professor Dingwell as the new ERC Secretary General. With his distinguished career in science and his international vantage point and background, I am convinced that Professor Dingwell will deliver an important contribution to the ERC, not the least in terms of international outreach and strategy - an area that lies at the heart of the ERC's mission."

Set up in 2007 by the EU, the ERC is the first pan-European funding organisation for frontier research. It aims to stimulate scientific excellence in Europe by encouraging competition for funding between the very best, creative researchers of any nationality and age. The ERC also strives to attract top researchers from anywhere in the world to come to Europe. The ERC, which is the newest, pioneering component of the EU's Seventh Research Framework Programme, has a total budget of €7.5 billion from 2007 to 2013.

Published: Tuesday, 30th August 2011 by Harry O'Neill