Who are the people leading the Frontiers Planet Prize?

Team

Responsible for developing and interconnecting the global scientific network and generating the daily traction to organize the annual international competition.


Jean-Claude
Burgelman

Director

  • ”Planetary wellbeing is not a luxury but an existential necessity. I want the Frontiers Planet Prize to bring this to the top of the global scientific agenda” - Jean-Claude Burgelman.

    Main responsibilities

    Jean-Claude sets the vision, direction and strategy for the Frontiers Planet Prize team.

    Jean-Claude is a Professor of Open Science Policy at the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and formerly the Head of Unit for Open Science Policy at the European Commission. With a focus on the impact of digital technologies on society, he has 40 years of experience in academia and policy-making.

    During his tenure at the European Commission, Professor Burgelman pioneered the development and implementation of Europe’s widely acclaimed open science policies. His drive and focus is to prove the case for open science and the enormous benefit it offers to people and planet.

    Jean-Claude was the architect of the Open Science Cloud.

    As Chief Editor of the Frontiers Policy Labs in Frontiers, Professor Burgelman explores novel ways how to achieve this by engaging leading voices in the policy and research space. He advocates for the notion that humankind can find solutions to global challenges by opening scientific research, while simultaneously closing the gap between research, society and policy-makers.

    Jean-Claude’s ambition for the Frontiers Planet Prize is to accelerate scientific solutions by becoming the Nobel prize for sustainability science.


Iulia
Pascu

Head of Operations

  • “My generation will never have a stable planet if we don’t act now. The Frontiers Planet Prize is a catalyst to solve this problem.” - Iulia Pascu

    Main responsibilities

    Iulia is in charge of generating, planning and coordinating the operational processes linked to the organization of the competition as well as monitoring the synergy between team members, external suppliers, and internal stakeholders. Iulia is also the point of contact for embedding the Frontiers Planet Prize Award Ceremony into the wider Frontiers Forum Live annual event.

    Iulia Pascu joined Frontiers in 2017 as Event Manager in charge of corporate events. Her previous experience includes seven years of event management at CERN, where she was in charge of conferences and outreach events.

    Iulia was previously part of THE Port, a non-profit association organizing humanitarian hackathons that develop technological solutions to tackle global humanitarian challenges.


Gilbert
De Gregorio

Associate Director

  • “Time is running out for us to keep our planet within its safe operating space, the planet prize empowers institutions, funders, national academies and the scientific community to make their impact” - Gilbert De Gregorio.


    Main responsibilities

    Gilbert oversees the strategic deployment of the prize, and orchestrates the best approach to partner with actors across the global scientific community. He establishes direct contact with the institutions (universities and national academies of science) and is the strategic liaison with the organizations in charge of international events where Frontiers Planet Prize is a member.

    Gilbert joined Frontiers initially in 2016, supporting the Physical Sciences and Engineering journal titles, and most recently held the position of Head of Publishing Program, for the Sustainability, and Biological Sciences programs. In 2020, he contributed to the signing of the UN SDGs Publishing Compact, and launched new titles across the sustainability publishing program. In 2021, he held the position of Head of Content Acquisition at F1000, part of the Taylor and Francis Group. Beyond scholarly publishing, Gilbert also has a range of professional experiences at global level, from innovation consulting within the life sciences, to patent examination in carbon capture and storage, at the European Patent Office.

    Gilbert trained as a green chemist, and holds a PhD in sustainable biofuel production using ionic liquids, at Imperial College.

    Gilbert's ambition for the Frontiers Planet Prize is ensuring scientific communities who are striving to protect our planet from entering the critical zones of any of the 9 planetary boundaries, are recognized and surfaced.


Madison
Creaco

Project Coordinator

  • “Our team at the Frontiers Planet Prize is devoted to working towards change to help save our planet. As our planet is changing, this means so should we.” - Madison Creaco


    Main responsibilities

    Madison is responsible for a range of operational responsibilities that are critical to the successful implementation and management of various entities associated with the Frontiers Planet Prize. These include research institutions, national academies of science, the Jury of 100, national and international champions, external suppliers as well as the associations of which the Planet Frontiers Prize is a member.

    To effectively carry out these responsibilities, Madison is responsible for managing and updating all databases related to the Prize's stakeholder community, coordinates, monitors, updates and feeds all the databases linked to the Prize's stakeholder community.

    Madison Creaco joined Frontiers in January 2022 as an Administrative Assistant for the Honoraria. Her previous experience includes five years as a Case Processing Immigration Officer for Immigration, Refugee, and Citizenship Canada where she was in charge of visa applications and administrative coordination. Madison also has several years of experience as a corporate event coordinator.