The Board was elected during the Extraordinary General Meeting in Leuven (Belgium), December 2012.

• Maria Antonietta Buccheri (Chair)
• Esperança Manuel (Vice Chair & Science Policy Group Coordinator)
• Erwan Lejeune (Secretary General)
• Gyorgy Szekely (Vice Secretary General)
• Eric Buchlin (Treasurer)
• Keira Melican (Vice Treasurer)
• Guggi Kofod (EC Liaison Officer)
• Maria Bostenaru Dan (Editor in Chief for the Letter to Members & Women in Science Group Coordinator)
• Anett Kiss (Co-Editor for the Letter to Members)
• Tiago Brandao Rodrigues (Science Policy Group Coordinator)
• Gianna Avellis (Women in Science Group Coordinator)
• Irene Marco Rius (Young Researchers Group Coordinator)
• Natalia Balcázar (MCFA ESOF 2012 Officer)
• Rui Pinto Guimaraes (National Groups Activities Coordinator)

To contact one of the board members, use the following email format: name.surname@mcfa.eu
When the member has several names or surnames, just put them one after the other separated by a dot.

Chair	Maria Antonietta Buccheri Maria Antonietta Buccheri has just completed her first post-doc in human molecular genetics at the Azienda Universitaria Ospedaliera “Vittorio Emanuele” in Catania and she is now collaborating with the Department of Biologia Animale of the Università degli Studi di Catania. She graduated in Biology at the Università degli Studi di Catania in 2001 with a thesis in molecular genetics. After graduation, she moved to France and worked at Institut Cochin in Paris. She then moved back to Italy and started a PhD in November 2003. In 2004 she was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship (FP6-EST) which she spent at CNRS in Villejuif (Paris-France). She obtained her PhD in molecular pharmacology at the Università degli Studi di Catania (Italy) in 2007. Her research interests are focused on the mechanisms of regulation of gene expression. Since 2005, she has been involved in the Marie Curie Fellows Association (MCFA).
Vice Chair   & Science Policy Group Coordinator	Esperança Manuel graduated in chemistry (spectroscopic methods) from "Université Pierre et Marie Curie," with a thesis in NMR methodology for the study of biomolecular assemblies. Thanks to a one year ESR Marie Curie fellowship (2005-2006) she participated to the study of the magnetocaloric effect in molecule-based magnets at the "Universitá di Modena e Reggio Emilia", in Italy. Afterwards she has been appointed in Germany as a team Member of a Marie Curie Exellence grant team at the "Universität Duisburg-Essen" (2006-2008), to be involved in the study of nanoparticle-based diluted magnetic semiconductors as a PhD work.
Secretary General	Erwan Lejeune is currently a post-doctoral fellow in Edinburgh-UK. He graduated in biochemistry from "Université de Rennes 1" in 2002. He obtained a masters’ degree in “Biologie and Health” from the "Université de Rennes 1" in 2003 and went on to complete his PhD at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Germany in 2007, with a thesis on centromeric epigenetic mechanisms. In 2008 he started post-doctoral research in the Allshire laboratory (Edinburgh-UK). There, he obtained funding from an EIF Marie Curie fellowship in 2009 to pioneer DNA localisation studies using live cell imaging techniques in fission yeast cells. Over the past 5 years he developed multiple international collaborations with on-site experimentations (UK, Germany, Japan and Australia). In parallel with the laboratory he is doing research on the subject of “Peer Review” and trying to identify ways to value this central practice of science in scholarly publishing.
Vice Secretary General	Gyorgy Szekely To be completed soon.
Treasurer	Eric Buchlin graduated in Physics from École Normale Supérieure in Paris and holds a PhD from Université Paris Sud and Università di Firenze. During one more year in Florence, he was a research assistant funded by a Research and Training Network (FP5) and became a Member of MCFA. After a stay at Imperial College, London, and a CNES research fellowship, he is now a CNRS researcher at Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale in Orsay, France. He is working on turbulence in the solar corona and the solar wind.
Vice Treasurer	Keira Melican Keira Melican graduated from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia in 2004 and gaining a masters degree at Uppsala University, Sweden. She completed her PhD at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm studying renal bacterial infection by intravital microscopy. She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at Paris Cardiovascular Research Center (INSERM), France, working on the development of new models for the study of meningococcal sepsis. She is funded by a Marie Curie IEF fellowship (2010).
EC Liaison Officer   Member of the EC External Advisory Group for FP7 People Programme	Guggi Kofod is currently a Post Doc. Group leader at the University of Potsdam in Germany, paid for with a five year personal grant from the German Ministry of Education and Research. His group is working on new materials for dielectric elastomer actuators, which might in the future be used "artificial muscles". He was born in Glostrup, Denmark, and lived his first four years in Bruxelles, when his mother was working as a secretary in the EEC. After receiving his Doctorate from the Danish Technical University, Denmark, he worked for one year at the Danish Institute for Fundamental Metrology, then for two years as Assistant Professor at Ateneo de Manila University, The Philippines, teaching undergraduate students in both the physics and chemistry departments. 2006-2007 he was a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellow at the University of Potsdam.
Editor in Chief for the Letter to Members   & Women in Science Group Coordinator	Maria Bostenaru Dan Maria Bostenaru Dan graduated in architecture with focus on urban planning at the University of Karlsruhe (Germany) in 1999. She continued doing research there in the field of risks, particularly seismic risk, to which the early 20th century heritage is subjected. She hold 3 Marie Curie Fellowships: an FP5 EST at the host institution ROSE School in Pavia (Italy), 6 months in 2002-2003, an FP6 Intra-European Fellowship (experienced researcher) also at the ROSE School, 2 years in 2005-2007 and an FP7 European Reintegration Grant to her home country of Romania, 3 years in 2007-2010. She benefited also from national grants, such as DFG in Germany (as student assistant with more Collaborative Research Centres SFB) and the CNCSIS and Architects’ Stamp in Romania. She is now researcher, permanent position, at the “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest (Romania). She was also awarded a Support Grant by the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal (Canada), one month in the summer 2010. She is Member of several international scientific committees in her field, and author and editor of numerous books.
Co-editor for the Letter to Members	Anett Kiss Anett Kiss graduated in biology at the University of Szeged, Hungary in 2003. She completed her PhD in 2008 at the University of Sheffield, UK as a Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher within the INTRO2 (Interdisciplinary Network for Training and Research on Photosystem 2) Research Training Network. Currently she is the holder of a European Reintegration Grant and carries out post-doctoral research at the Umeå Plant Science Centre, Umeå University, Sweden. Her research area is photosynthesis with special focus on the regulation of light harvesting.
Science Policy Group Coordinator	Tiago Brandao Rodrigues To be completed soon.
Women in Science Group Coordinator	Gianna Avellis is an Italian citizen and former EIT Fellow of Marie Curie. She is graduated in Computing, and spent 20 years in industrial research and 4 years in academic research. Gianna is currently working at Innova Puglia SpA, the in-house company of Apulia Region to promote Technology Transfer and Innovation to PAs. She is leading researcher in Mobile Learning and has large experience as project manager of European R&D projects in Software Engineering, Mobile Telecommunication, Multimedia and Education. She serves the EU Commission and other regional agencies of research as Independent expert evaluator.She was awarded a HCM (Human Capital and Mobility) fellowship of 18 months at Imperial College, London, UK, as experienced researcher, in Software Engineering. Gianna is currently interested to investigate how scientific mobility can enhance the career of women in SET, and founded to this purpose mobile Women in Science and Technology (m-WiSET) Working Group in MCFA, and ITWIIN (Italian Women Innovators and Investors Network) www.itwiin.it , the Italian branch of the European EUWIIN.
Young Researchers Group Coordinator	Irene Marco Rius To be completed soon.
National Groups Activities Coordinator	Rui Pinto Guimaraes After the graduation from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto in Computer Science he started working at Institute for Biomedical Engineering from University College London as a research assistant. That experience made him follow a Masters in Biomedical Engineering from that University while still working at the institute. His research in these fields guided him afterward to the Virtual Training and Development Center in Magdeburg, Germany with a 3 year Marie Curie Fellowship to work in surgery simulators. Here he acquired an interest in software embodied agents and speech recognition. Recently he finished a 1 year Marie Curie Fellowship in the Institute for Language and Speech Recognition in Athens, Greece.
MCFA ESOF 2012 Officer	Natalia Balcázar is since its foundation director of ENVIROpro – European Environmental Project Management, Germany ( www.enviro-pro.eu ). She studied Geological Sciences at the Complutense University in Madrid and made in 1992 her doctoral thesis in the framework of an ECSC project. After her PhD, she went in 1994 to Germany with a post-doc DAAD fellowship and stay at the same research institute (www.fehs.de) further with a Marie Curie individual fellowship. Her main work areas are the improvement of the use of resources and the energy efficiency for SMEs and municipalities. Since her arrival to Germany she has been working also at the women network Connecta – Das Frauennetzwerk e.V. in the area of Gender Mainstreaming. After her Marie Curie Fellowship she jointed as active Member the Marie Curie Fellows Association (MCFA). 2005/2006 she was Member of the MCFA Advisory Board. In 2007/2008 she was Treasurer.

MCFA Advisory Board

the Administrative board has created an Advisory Board with which the Administrative Board will closely collaborate. The members of the Advisory Board are listed on a separate page.